Part 27

“But I have, miss,” said her father coming behind, guided by their voices, his scant apparel as invisible in the gloom as himself. “Is this another attempt to disgrace us by eloping? Oh, my child, my child, you are breaking your poor old father’s heart!”

“And mine!” floated like the echo of despair’s last sigh from the lips of Jabez.

But the utter hopelessness of the old man’s tone touched a sensitive chord of Augusta’s soul, and turning, she fell upon his neck crying tearfully, “Oh, forgive me, father, forgive me. I did not think you would take it so much to heart.”

The appeal of affection to affection had accomplished what reason and authority had failed to effect.

CHAPTER THE FORTIETH.

WITH ALL HIS FAULTS.

Augusta’s penitence exhaled like dew from a flower. In the light of her mother’s lofty displeasure her tears dried, and self-will once more exerted its pre-eminence. She locked herself in her own room and resolutely refused to come forth.

“So long as that odious meddler, Jabez Clegg, remains under our roof, I will stay here; and, if you will not consent to my marriage with Laurence Aspinall, I will starve myself to death!” was her angry declaration, as she closed the door and turned the key.

“Leave her alone,” said Mrs. Ashton, “she will want her food before the food wants her; and a little wholesome solitude is good for reflection. She will change her mind before the day closes.”

This was at mid-day; but night came, and another noon, yet there was no sign of Miss Ashton’s appearance; and Mrs. Ashton had made no overtures to her refractory daughter. The tender-hearted father was in a pitiable state of perturbation. In and out the warehouse he was twenty times in the day—as Kezia observed, “For a’ th’ world like a hen on a hot griddle;” and his snuff-box was hardly ever out of his hand. Business seemed altogether beyond his grasp; he answered questions at random, or was unconscious when addressed.

To this state of trouble Jabez unintentionally contributed his quota. Over the tea-table, unenlivened by Augusta’s sparkling presence, though she was the one sole topic of conversation—he said, and not without an effort—

“It has occurred to me, and I have thought the matter well over, that since my unfortunate position in relation to late events has made my very presence obnoxious to Miss Ashton, it might be better for all concerned if I were to shift my quarters without delay. There are lodgings vacant close at hand; and I have no right to linger here and disturb the peace of any one member of your kind family.”

“Jabez Clegg!” remonstrated Mr. Ashton, with wide-open eyes.

“Have you any _other_ reason to be dissatisfied with present arrangements?” asked Mrs. Ashton stiffly.

“Oh! Mrs. Ashton, how can I have? This house has been my home for years, and such a home as rarely falls to the lot of the fatherless. To you, my benefactors, I owe everything—almost myself; and I should ill repay your uniform kindness by remaining to create discord.”

“If your only desire to remove is to gratify Miss Ashton’s whims, you will oblige me, Mr. Clegg, by remaining,” replied Mrs. Ashton, with grave decision; whilst Mr. Ashton, looking the very picture of consternation, laid his hand upon the young man’s sleeve, and said slowly—

“My lad, you have been one of the household for many years; do not be the first to make a breach in the family. If the child of our blood and our affections goes forth to strangers wilfully, and repudiates us, do not let the son of our adoption leave us to lament her loss in solitude.”

This was strong language, but Mrs. Ashton did not gainsay it, and Mr. Clegg could not longer press the point though his own pain was intensified by the fear of adding to the distress of Augusta, who, he was confident, regarded him as an interloper and a mischief-maker.

Little had been seen of Ellen since the return from Carr Cottage. A message despatched by Mrs. Ashton to her sister, in her dilemma, was answered by another to pray them to “excuse Miss Chadwick, who was not well enough to go out.”

This somewhat disconcerted Mrs. Ashton, who, more alarmed than she would admit, and disturbed by the restless uneasiness of her husband, had looked for Ellen to act as a mediator without any compromise of her own dignity.

At the close of the second day, as Augusta pertinaciously refused to open the door, at the instance of Jabez the lock was forced; and even then a barrier of chairs and boxes had to be thrust back by sheer strength. She was exhausted from want of food, but her will was indomitable, and neither her father’s entreaties, nor her mother’s commands could induce her to partake of the viands spread before her.

Jabez was in agony. Delicacy and her obvious dislike had kept him from intruding upon her privacy, but as hour after hour was added to the night, and Augusta persistently dashed aside the food placed to her lips, he joined his prayers to those of her father; and neither availing, rushed out of the house, and in less than a quarter of an hour returned with Dr. Hull. _He_ was not a man to stand any nonsense.

“Here, sir”—to Jabez—“you are young and strong, hold the silly child’s arms whilst her teeth are forced apart. If she will not take food, she shall take physic, and see which she likes the best.”

But the struggle to nourish her frame through set teeth was prolonged and painful, and the parents were likely to yield before the child.

Servants may be faithful, but they have eyes and ears, and not always discreet tongues. Family matters discussed freely in the kitchen before apprentices, found their way into the warehouse and beyond it, and Mrs. Ashton’s nerves tingled when she became acquainted with the rumours afloat.

From Tim, the Ashton stable-boy, Aspinall’s emissary (Bob the groom, once more in his old service) had no difficulty in obtaining all the information his young master needed.

Laurence waylaid Mr. Ashton, inquired anxiously after the obstinate girl’s health, and, having paved the way by as much contrition as he thought necessary, called at the house the following morning, in company with his father, to renew proposals for Miss Ashton’s hand.

Worn out by Augusta’s obstinacy, which she and Laurence agreed to call “constancy,” father and mother were in a different frame of mind to receive this proposition than when they had given their former peremptory rejection. They were not one whit more convinced by Mr. Laurence’s assurance that he meant to “reform,” or Mr. Aspinall’s quotation of the adage, “A reformed rake makes the best husband”; but rather than see their child starve herself to death before their very eyes, they yielded; and Laurence Aspinall, profuse alike in thanks and professions, was permitted by aching hearts and reluctant lips to introduce Augusta to his father then and there as his bride elect.

It was a moment of triumph for Laurence when Augusta refused to come down without an assurance under his own hand. He pencilled on a card, “My Augusta, I wait for you,—Laurence.” And presently, supported by a maid-servant, she entered the room, her dress of purple poplin serving to show how wan and transparent her fair skin had grown, how unnatural was the brilliance of her eyes.

She would have fallen, as much from weakness as emotion, on her entrance into the parlour, but that Laurence darted forward and caught her in an embrace which brought back somewhat of her lost colour; and if anything could have softened the pain of that hour to her parents, it was the apparent ardour and sincerity of the lover, the hope that a genuine passion might tend to wean him from his old habits and associates.

Mr. Aspinall’s reception of Augusta was characteristic.

“My charming Miss Ashton, I see my son has brought back the roses to your cheeks. May they never fade again, but bloom perennially without a thorn! I rejoice to kiss your hand paternally on this auspicious occasion, and to assure you that I shall be proud to welcome such beauty and such constancy as the wife of my noble son.”

Consent once obtained, the Aspinalls were as eager to press forward the marriage as the Ashtons were to retard it, neither her father nor mother affecting a satisfaction they did not feel.

“My dear,” said the latter to Augusta one day, when her eyes were sparkling over a costly present just received from Laurence, “your father was in hopes you would have fixed your heart on some good steady man like Jabez Clegg, who would have been a comfort and a credit to all of us, and have kept the business in the family after we were in our graves.”

“Pshaw, mamma! how preposterous! I am surprised at my father’s infatuation for that young man. I esteem him quite sufficiently for a friend, but”—and she locked an emerald earring in her delicate ear—“I could not exist with a husband whose heart was in his business. My husband’s heart must hold me and me only; and I must have something to look at as well as to love.”

“Ah! Augusta, it must be a very small heart indeed which cannot find room both for a wife and a business to maintain her fittingly. The sheen of a dress which must last a life is of less consequence than its durable texture.”

“Well, mamma, so long as the material pleases my eyes, I will take the wear upon trust. And do not be surprised that _your_ daughter prefers a fine man and a gentleman to one whose fortune is in the clouds, and whose origin is so obscure, he has not _even a name_ to call his own.”

She was standing to admire herself and her new jewellery in the Venetian glass between the windows as she said this, and her mother’s figure filling in the frame, Jabez Clegg came and went unseen, a pang in his heart and an intensified resolve to make both fortune and name for himself even though his master’s daughter vanished from his vision.

Nothing would induce Mr. Ashton to part with his child until she was at least eighteen; and in that particular he was proof against the importunities of Laurence and the cajoleries of Augusta. So for ten months (during which the lawyers had ample time to quarrel over the settlement of Augusta’s £18,000, so that too much or too little should not be tied down on the lady) the dashing young blade was on his trial, so to speak, and contrived to beguile both father and mother of their prejudices; whilst to Augusta a new world of gaiety was opened out.

As her daughter’s chaperon, Mrs. Ashton renewed her acquaintance with the yellow satin cushions of the Assembly Rooms, the Gentlemen’s Concerts discoursed sweet music in their ears, Miss Ashton could take her seat in the boxes of the Theatre Royal without fear of Madame Broadbent’s fan, and Kezia was in her glory, so many balls and parties had to be catered for; and Mr. Laurence Aspinall was in the ascendant.

All this was inexpressibly painful to Jabez, but as he had written to Ben Travis that “there was something more for men to do than die of disappointment or blighted love,” so he set his face like a rock against the breakers, and gave himself entirely to business. He said to himself it would be cowardice to flee from that which must be borne and mastered, so never another word was heard of his seeking a home elsewhere. If he was brave, he was not foolhardy enough to court pain in the sight of his rival’s triumph, and though in his determination to “stick to his last,” he had eschewed all art which came not within the scope of pattern designing, to that he turned with redoubled assiduity after business hours, having found a profitable market apart from Mr. Ashton’s firm, as his account with the Savings Bank in Cross Street had borne witness from the date of its establishment in January, 1818.

But for a brief space, and that whilst the wound was raw and new, his ministrations to the dying chaplain of the Old Church not only carried him out of sight and hearing, but in a measure drew his thoughts away from his own sorrow.

Once only did Joshua scarify the sore. In an interval of pain he said with his customary abruptness,

“And so that pretty lass of thy master’s is going to throw herself away on the wild rascal who pitched thee over the wall?”

Jabez could not trust himself to answer save by a movement of his head.

“Ugh! she’d better ha’ takken a fancy to thee!”

Half-an-hour or more elapsed. Waking from a doze, he said—

“Dost thou remember my telling thee to look at ‘Hogarth’s Apprentice’ in Chadwick’s parlour?”

“Indeed, I do! They have influenced my life,” answered Mr. Clegg with a sigh, pouring out a dose of medicine as he spoke.

“More physic, eh? Ugh! doctors kill more than they cure with their stuff! Ay, lad, thah’st mounted up, thou’lt be a master thyself some day, if thou dost not forget that _Jabez_ must be an _honourable_ man!”

“I never did forget it sir, even though the apprentice boy was mad enough to aspire to his master’s daughter! But losing her, I have learned a new lesson. The prayer of the olden Jabez, which has been mine night and morn from boyhood, was a prayer for _self_, and _self_ only, and I had no right to look for an answer to all the hopes I based upon it. If I have not been ‘kept from evil,’ and it _has_ ‘grieved me,’ I prayed for myself _alone_, and in grief I have my answer. Prayer should take a wider range.”

“Right, lad, right! now let me sleep.”

When he waked again he remarked—

“It’s time for thee to be off, Jabez; but time is running faster with me than thee, lad. Here, reach yon Terence from the bureau. It is the Edinburgh edition. Keep it for the sake of the rough old Parson who gave thee thy name. And take care of it. Good night. How thick the fog is!” He had lost the sight of one eye, and the other was rapidly going.

That was the ninth of November. When Jabez came again on the eleventh, the fog had cleared away from Joshua Brookes’s sight for ever; and fountains of tears ran freely from many eyes for the hot, hasty, single-minded, and learned Parson whose name was a household word in the town, and who had ever been a kind friend to Jabez. In his life he had been at war with huckster-women, street-urchins, school-boys, and his ecclesiastical brethren. In his death the wide parish, and more than the parish, united to reverence his memory, those who had laughed loudest at his eccentricities being foremost to bewail him.

Even the November clouds hung thick and heavy as a pall over the Old Church and churchyard, crowded with mourners, when his silent remains were carried to their bed in the cross aisles his feet had trodden so many active years, and if others besides Jabez shed tears over the open and honoured grave, there was many an old creature mourning in solitude, besides the queer old woman in kerchief and mutch, who sat amongst her sweets in a closed shop, and lamented that so young a man as Parson Brookes should be carried off before her.

“Well-a-day! and only sixty-seven! He’ll want no more humbugs, and no more cakes for his pigeons. Poor Jotty!”

There was no mention of Jabez in his will, but when the young man took the old worn Terence sadly and reverently down from the shelf where he had first placed it, on turning over its leaves he found a bank note for £300 pinned to the fly-leaf, on which was inscribed his own name and that of the eccentric donor.

CHAPTER THE FORTY-FIRST.

MARRIAGE!

Had Jabez been vindictive, the opportunity, or at least the promise of revenge on his successful rival was not wanting. Various efforts had been made to call the Manchester Yeomanry to account for their doings at Peterloo, and many had been the overtures and suggestions to Jabez Clegg by members of the Radical party to join in the prosecution of the offenders. But he resolutely refused to identify the trooper who struck him, saying—

“I forgave the man at the time, believing him to be drunk, and incapable of discrimination. If I have since had reason to think otherwise, I cannot be so mean as to allow private feeling to influence a public act.”

It would be false to say there never was a tug at his heartstrings when the tempters were again at his elbow, before they made their final attempt in 1822. But he said to himself—

“If it would have been revengeful at the time when the bodily injury was fresh, it would be doubly revengeful, mean, and dishonourable now that he has supplanted me in love. And in striking at him I should wound Augusta, and that must never be.”

The temptation to expose his adversary was set aside, and thus it was that Laurence Aspinall’s name was not added to those of the four defenders on the record of the trial at Lancaster in April; and as that trial, after the examination of nearly a hundred witnesses of all ranks, terminated unsuccessfully for the prosecution, the forbearance of our friend Jabez spared him at least the mortification of defeat.

The year rolled on. At the instance of Mr. Ashton, Jabez withdrew the bulk of his deposits from the Savings Bank, and adding to Joshua Brookes’s gift the £200 he had accumulated by working late and early and saving small sums even during his apprenticeship, placed all in his master’s hands, to be invested in the business and so return him a higher rate of interest. And this was the first absolute start of Jabez as a capitalist.

The joyous excitement attending Augusta’s own preparations for her approaching nuptials was somewhat damped by the unaccountable condition of Ellen Chadwick, whose health, instead of improving during her visit to Carr Cottage, had appeared to decline still more perceptibly. A constant pain at her chest, frequent headaches, uncertain spirits, and increasing languor gave Mr. and Mrs. Chadwick real cause for uneasiness; but Ellen would not hear of a doctor, and maintained that it was “nothing to trouble about,” she should “be better soon.”

But she did not get “better soon,” and when the first August sun shone on Augusta’s birthday and bridal, it taxed her powers to the utmost to sustain efficiently her part as bridesmaid.

Had Captain Travis accepted his lieutenant’s invitation to be groomsman, she would have found it still more difficult; but a comparative stranger, a Mr. Joseph Bennett, of Gorton, filled the post, the bride’s father having objected very decidedly to bold Ned Barret.

Yet Ben Travis and Jabez Clegg were both among the guests, albeit it cost each a struggle. The two had mutually strengthened each other as such friends should, arriving at the Spartan decision to “suffer and be silent, facing their fate like men.” And indeed, old Mr. Ashton had wrung the hand of Jabez at least a week before, and said—

“I’m sorry for you, Clegg; I am, upon my soul; and I’m sorry for our poor lass too, for she’s made a mistake. But keep a brave heart, and don’t let that slashing yeomanry fellow crow over you. As Mrs. Ashton would say, ‘What can’t be cured must be endured,’ and we must all of us show the best face at the wedding that we can.”

If that meant elaborate display in dress and decorations, and provision for the bridal breakfast and dinner, then the face exhibited was a shining one. Mrs. Hodgson, the fashionable mantua-maker and milliner of Oldham Street (where two or three of the private houses had already been converted into shops), had kept her apprentices at work almost night and day for weeks, executing bridal orders from the Ashtons and their friends. A very snowstorm might have passed through the work-room, such heaps of white French-crape and satin, lace and organdi, lute-string and gauze, littered and covered available space, putting matronly brocade, velvet, and llama quite into the shade.

The warehouse saw little of Mrs. Ashton for a week or ten days previously. Cicily, who had gone over to the Aspinalls, had begged to be allowed to help Kezia for that occasion; and she roasted her own face in spinning gold and silver webs and baskets from sugar for the table, making “floating islands,” syllabubs, trifles, jellies, and blanc-mange to supplement the solid dishes Kezia dressed with so much skill. And Mr. Mabbott sent in a sugary “Temple of Hymen” and a bride’s cake prepared six weeks in advance.

The bride, alternately radiant and tearful like an April day, veiled with lace, and crowned with white rose-buds and orange-blossoms, wore a low-bodiced dress of white satin, festooned round the narrow skirt with costly lace, whilst on neck and arms, and in her tiny ears, were negligé, bracelets, and earrings of pearl, the gift of the gallant bridegroom’s gallant father.

The bridegroom was scarcely less resplendent in his high-collared blue coat and gold buttons, his white waistcoat buttoned to match, his glossy white trousers, and low shoes tied with a bunch of silk ferret. An oblong brooch set with a rim of pearls held down his broad fine shirt-frills; from his fob hung a huge bunch of gold seals pendant from a flat gold watch chain; and in his hand (not crushing his elaborate curls, now clustering richly as ever) he carried a hat of white beaver of the newest shape.

To Mr. and Mrs. Ashton it was a matter of open regret that Joshua Brookes, who had christened Augusta, should not have lived to marry her also; but Mr. Aspinall, whose reminiscences of the old chaplain were of another order, was much better satisfied to see his own personal friend Parson Gatliffe, the _bon vivant_, behind the altar-rails.

If the bride was tall and graceful, with sunshine in her eyes and in her classic curls, tall and stately was the bride’s mother, whose long train of purple silk velvet swept the aisles, though trains had ceased to be general. There was no faltering over the responses. There was a glow of modest pride on the cheek of Augusta; a look of mingled ardour and exultation on the face of Laurence; his “_I will_” was pronounced with a force which was almost fierce, yet, as she faintly promised to “obey,” he pressed her hand with smiling significance.

The ceremony over, the bride did not faint, but turning to her tearful-eyed father, threw her arms around his neck and clung to him, whispering how grateful she was that he had given her the man of her choice, and that he should see what a good wife she would make; and the impromptu embrace sent a shower of snuff over white satin and lace.

Yet some one fainted, whom Ben Travis caught in his strong arms and carried to the church door for air; a dark-haired, black-eyed bridesmaid, whose face was white and skin transparent as her own robe.

Custom had not set its imperative seal on the wedding tour as a necessity, but after a magnificent solid dinner, to which the party did full justice, and an elaborate dessert, during which the cake was cut, and Mr. Aspinall proposed the health of the bride in an inflated toast, demanding that it should be drunk in bumpers, “and no heel-taps,” the wedded pair drove off in Mr. Aspinall’s carriage to the family mansion at Fallowfield, there to spend the honeymoon.

“Good-bye, Jabez,” said Augusta, putting her small soft hand into his as they left the house; “you will comfort my father and mother, will you not? I trust them to you.”

And he replied with the fervency of truth, “I accept the trust willingly. Good-bye, Mrs. Aspinall” (how the word choked him!) “May God bless you, and the marriage you have contracted. Good-bye!”

He did not kiss her hand, had not taken the common liberty of guests to kiss the bride’s lips in church; he did but press her hand as any old friend who had grown up with her under the same roof might have done; but before the carriage had well dashed from the door, or the bridegroom had fairly settled himself on his seat, Laurence turned to the fair young wife, whose prophetic tears were now falling fast, with the sharp rebuke—