Part 28

“What was that foundling fellow mumbling over your hand? You will please to remember that that hand is mine now, Mrs. Aspinall. You have promised to _love_ and _obey_ me—ME your LORD and MASTER. And MASTER I mean to be. I have borne the fooling of your friends and your own pretty caprices long enough. It is my turn now; and if any man so much as dares to look at you I’ll pound him to a jelly! And now dry your eyes and give me a kiss!”

And that was the inauguration of Augusta Aspinall’s married life.

It has been said that the bridesmaid fainted. Every lady carried a smelling bottle, and means to revive her were not far to seek. She soon recovered, and with a sensitive blush withdrew from the arms which had been so proud to sustain her, casting her eyes round as if in search of some other whose service might have been more acceptible. But she suffered no relapse. She was ready to wait upon the bride, to sign “Ellen Chadwick” in the church register, and to assist Mr. Joseph Bennett in cutting up the cake for distribution, with cards and gloves, to friends not present. It was an arduous task, and she succumbed before it was half completed.

“Miss Chadwick, you are not well; let me relieve you,” said Jabez, coming to her assistance after the “happy pair” had driven off, and whilst peals of laughter, shouts, and hurrahs came from the dining-room where gentlemen were honouring the bridal by drinking themselves senseless and speechless.

Ellen remained with her aunt a few days longer, during which Jabez, exceedingly pained to see the ravages hidden disease had made in so estimable a young lady, was pitifully attentive.

He could not, however, fail to see that his attentions distressed her; and, on the whole he was not sorry when Augusta’s parents and he were left to themselves, to talk of their own dear one and speculate on her future.

Weeks went by. Mrs. Aspinall visited her old home, but never without her husband; and seldom was she allowed to remain more than an hour. Her spirits seemed exuberant, but somehow her unusual vivacity jarred on her mother’s nerves, and she suspected that her spirits were forced.

Meanwhile Ellen Chadwick faded. Dr. Hardie, called in at last, watched his patient with curious and attentive eye, perplexed and dubious. He had been friend as well as physician since Mr. Chadwick’s attack of paralysis, and was a close observer. Now he came and went in a gossiping sort of way, to put his patient at ease, and off her guard. He was there one day when Jabez was announced, and saw a sudden spasmodic action of the face, a dilation of the pupils, a scarcely perceptible pant and parting of the lips, and then he watched her closer. He introduced Mr. Clegg’s name, as if casually, whilst his fingers were on her pulse. The result of his observations were told to Mr. Chadwick the same day.

“Your daughter has no specific disease, Mr. Chadwick, she is simply _love-sick_.”

“L-love-s-sick?”

“Yes; and her secret passion is consuming her. Medicine cannot save the patient’s life if her affection be not returned, and that right speedily.”

Mr. Chadwick was aghast.

“I feared as much,” said Mrs. Chadwick, with a sigh.

“Then you will have an inkling who is the desired object?” said the doctor.

“I think so.”

“Does your maternal instinct point to Mr. Clegg?” he asked, with a curious look.

“It does; but he himself has no suspicion, and I am sure regards Ellen only as a friend—a friend elevated a little above him.”

“Is the young man courting?”

“I believe not.”

“Then,” said the doctor sententiously, “the sooner he is, the better for Miss Chadwick. Her life is not worth a month’s purchase unless Mr. Clegg become the buyer. But let not Miss Ellen hear a whisper of my opinion. Good day.”

And snatching up his hat the doctor departed, leaving them to their reflections.

Here was a delicate subject to be dealt with, and that without either loss of time or the sacrifice of their beloved child’s sensitiveness and reserve.

Unknown to Ellen a family conclave assembled under the Mosley Street roof, to discuss the momentous question, and deliberate what was best to be done. Long and grave were their deliberations. At length, taking Mr. Chadwick’s imperfect speech into consideration, Mr. Ashton consented to lay the case before Jabez, and leave his brother-in-law to supplement it, if necessary; though opinions were divided as to the result.

It was after business hours, and Mr. Ashton found Jabez in his own room, doing his best to dissipate thought by hard work, mind and hand being busy with a chintz-pattern for calico-printing.

There was a nervous plunge into the gold snuff-box, and a consequent flourish of a gay bandana, and some time spent in examining the incomplete design on the desk, before Mr. Ashton could fairly enter on his embassy. After a little prelude, in which, whilst enlarging on the serious nature of his niece’s illness, he elicited from Jabez that he held the young lady in the very highest esteem, and was deeply grieved to hear of her perilous state, he put down his snuff-box on the table before him, and drawing up his chair so as to bring their heads closer together, looked steadfastly into the other’s clear eyes as he put the question—

“And what should you think of _love_ as the cause of her malady?”

“LOVE!” echoed Jabez, his mind running off to the agonised confession made to him on the Taxal hillside.

“Yes, _love_, and for the very man whose merits _my_ foolish child failed to see.”

Jabez looked at him vaguely.

“Surely not Mr. Marsland!”

“Pah! no!” exclaimed Mr. Ashton, as if disgusted at his obtuseness. “Yourself, man—Jabez Clegg.”

Jabez fixed his eyes on his informant in blank amazement, a monosyllabic long-drawn “_Me!_” being his sole response.

“Just so!” assented Mr. Ashton, and he took a pinch of snuff on the strength of it.

“Oh, sir, there must be some mistake! How has this been ascertained? Has Miss Chadwick made——”

“No, Clegg, the poor lass has never said one word, except with her eyes and pulse. Dr. Hardie has made the discovery now, and it turns out Mrs. Chadwick suspected it long ago.”

“Oh, dear! dear! this is very terrible!”

He was estimating the pain in Ellen’s heart by that in his own.

“Very terrible indeed, Clegg, for Hardie says the lass’s life is not worth so much as a yard of filleting if her love meet no return.”

The head of Jabez sank in his open hands upon the table. What would his friend Travis think of all this? Presently he raised his face, over which a strange change had passed.

“Mr. Ashton, what would you have me do?”

“Whatever Jabez Clegg thinks he ought to do,” he answered steadily, adding in another tone, “I would have been glad to have given thee my own child: my brother-in-law implores thee to take _his_ child, to save her life.”

After a prolonged silence Jabez spoke.

“Mr. Ashton, I hold that love alone can sanctify marriage: my love has blossomed and died fruitless. Yet so highly do I esteem Miss Chadwick, and so proud am I of the great honour she has done me in her preference, that I place myself in your hands. If I can spare so amiable a young lady the pain I suffer from rejected love, I should be a brute and a savage to refuse her the remnant of a valueless life. We may at least soften its asperities for each other.”

The Chadwicks went home with minds relieved, but Jabez had stipulated that nothing should be said to Ellen of their overtures to him, no hint given which could alarm her shrinking modesty.

The following day he called to inquire about her health, made his genuine anxiety apparent, and noted, as he had never done before, how her lip trembled and her eyelid drooped. Gradually, as his attentions became more marked, her health and spirits rose, and when at last he proposed to her calmly, quietly, as though he sought a haven when the frothy waves of a first passion had subsided, she accepted him as God’s best gift, all unaware that his offer was not spontaneous, or that her cousin Augusta was yet deeply shrined in his secret heart.

He had been at first greatly concerned about Ben Travis but the generous fellow, to whom he felt in honour bound to explain his conduct, only wrung his hand and said—

“I could not resign her to a worthier.”

CHAPTER THE FORTY-SECOND.

BLOWS.

Richard Chadwick, who had served as a midshipman under Admiral Collingwood, and shared in the victory of Trafalgar, was a midshipman still, and his vessel had long been away on a foreign station. Few, brief, and far between had been his opportunities to visit home and friends. Ships had been paid off, but he had been exchanged, several years had elapsed since he had set foot in Manchester, and the hearts of his kin yearned towards their sailor.

His very whereabouts was unknown to them, and when written communication was necessary, letters had to be forwarded through the Admiralty.

Ellen’s engagement and prospective marriage called forth a voluminous epistle, crossed and recrossed like a trellis, from Mrs. Chadwick to her son, whose presence she craved, if leave of absence could possibly be obtained. The letter was a singular compound of gratulation and apology, through which a thin undercurrent of dissatisfaction meandered like a stream. His sister’s strange malady and infatuation for a man of apparently low origin, whose name and parentage were alike unknown, were set forth to be deplored. Still, since the sole remedy for Ellen’s ailment rested with this obscure Mr. Clegg whose career upwards, from his floating cradle to his honourable position in the Ashton house and warehouse, was circumstantially detailed, his personal worth was a matter for congratulation; and the deep obligation of the whole family to him for the service rendered on Peterloo-Day seemed dragged in as a sort of extenuating circumstance. Clearly the Mr. Travis, whose name and pretensions cropped up here and there throughout the letter would have been a more acceptable son-in-law in the sight of Mrs. Chadwick and his other sister, Charlotte Walmsley, and just as clearly it was made apparent that his paralysed father (hale and strong in all other respects) was as much infatuated with the young man as was Ellen, having “positively offered to take him into partnership on his entrance into the family.” And even there Mrs. Chadwick felt “constrained to admit that the clear head, business tact, and energy of Mr. Clegg would be a great acquisition.”

This item of news closed the missive, which must have gone a circuitous round of red tape it was so long upon its travels. Months came and went; Father Christmas shook his snowy locks over the town; but neither the midshipman nor a written substitute put in an appearance.

Meanwhile Jabez, who had crushed down in the garden of his heart those roots of his love for Augusta which mocked his strength to eradicate, did his best to plant and foster above them a grateful affection for the one who had chosen him, and hoped in time that the newer growth might utterly extinguish the old. His attentions to Ellen were more assiduous than, under the circumstances, might have been expected; but he argued with himself—

“I must endeavour to atone to her for a proposal in which love had no part. She must never have occasion to suspect the truth. I should be a brute did I remain insensible to the unconquerable love she has so long cherished in secret for me. Augusta’s face, alas! was more divinely fair, her manner more enchanting; but Ellen, though she is older than myself, will doubtless make the best wife for a business man who has to carve his way to fortune, and _she loves me_!”

Ellen, too, had her seasons of doubt and perplexity. She had been so sensitively alive to the silent homage of Jabez Clegg to her younger and fairer cousin that at first her mind had refused to realise the fact that he desired to marry her, even though his proposal had been preceded by direct and palpable attention. She had been at first inclined to attribute his many acts of kindness and courtesy to friendship and compassion for her failing health. And when he had spoken of being won by her many estimable qualities to seek her for a wife, she had listened incredulously; then, overpowered by contending emotions, sank back amongst her cushions, in a state of insensibility. Even her tremulous acceptance had been uttered as in a blissful dream, which might vanish all too soon. From time to time she perplexed herself with questions of the motive for so sudden a change in one so steadfast as Jabez, and at last wavered between the two suppositions that Augusta’s wilfulness had wearied him, or that she owed her lover to pique. Of the real state of the case she had no inkling.

She was not alone in her latter supposition.

“A happy new year to you, Mrs. Clowes!” said our friend Jabez to his friend the old confectioner, as at one stride he took the two steps to her confined shop on the bright frosty second of January, 1823, and extended his hand to her across the counter, where she still kept up a show of activity in spite of age and wrinkles.

“Same to you, Mr. Clegg.”

She had been one of the first to recognise his right to the prefix, and with all her old-fashioned familiarity never dropped it.

“Eh, but now I look at thee, thah doesn’t look ower bright an’ happy;” and she peered into his face inquiringly.

He smiled.

“Looks are not always to be relied on. I ought to be happy, for I am about to be married, and my errand hither is to——”

She interrupted him with—

“So I’ve heard. But what o’that? Is she th’ reet un? For I wouldna give a mince-pie for thi happiness if she isna.”

The blood mounted painfully to his forehead.

“Miss Chadwick is all that is estimable and amiable, Mrs. Clowes,” he answered steadily, “and if I am not happy with her it will be my own fault.”

The old dame was not satisfied. The white linen lappets of her antiquated mutch flapped like a spaniel’s ears as she shook her head.

“Eh, well!” sighed she, opening and shutting a drawer in the counter abstractedly, “you should know best, but both me and Parson Brookes (dead and gone as he is) thought you’d set your mind on th’ lass that rantipollin lad Aspinall snapped up. I hope thah’s not goin’ to wed th’ cousin out o’ spite,” and she looked up in his face, over which a cloud had swept. “It would be the worst day’s work you ever did, either for her or you.”

He had mastered his emotion, and answered cheerfully—

“Make your mind easy, Mrs. Clowes. I am not marrying from any unworthy motive, and I think our prospect of happiness is about the average. I came to ask you, as the oldest friend I have in the town, to be present on the occasion.”

Mrs. Clowes was overpowered.

“What! Mr. Clegg! Me, in my old black stuff gown and mutch, among your grand folk? Nay, nay; I’m too old to don weddin’ garments. But I tell you what”—and her face puckered with pride and pleasure—“you shall have the finest wedding-cake that ever was baked i’ Manchester, and the old woman will mebbe look on the weddin’ from some quiet nook, out o’ the way. It’s a thousand pities Jotty is not alive to marry you?”

“There will be no grand folk, Mrs. Clowes; I am but a poor man struggling upwards, and Miss Chadwick has not had good health of late; so we shall be married very quietly on Wednesday week. Only very near relatives, or old friends are invited.”

Customers interrupted the colloquy. When the shop was clear, she asked where he was going to live after marriage, and was told, with his bride’s parents.

“Eh! but that’s a bad look out. Now, I’ve built some houses in a new street off Oxford Road as they call Rosamund Street, an’ I’ll tell you what, you shall have one to live in at a peppercorn rent, and I’ll lend you the money to furnish it. Young folks are best by themselves.”

Clear and bright were the eyes that met hers in reply.

“Thank you, Mrs. Clowes, thank you heartily for your kind offer; but I think you lose sight of Mr. Chadwick’s infirmity. He has acted very liberally towards me—in fact, has offered to take me into partnership—and I should ill repay him by removing from his hearth the good daughter on whom he relies. It is rather my duty to add to the comfort of his declining years.”

“Oh!” said she, sharply; “if that’s how you raise your crust I’d best keep my fingers out of your pie.”

Jabez was going. The shop was full.

“Stay, Mr. Clegg,” said she, beckoning him into her parlour, and closing the door. “It’s hard cheese for a man to owe everything to his father-in-law. I’ve got £500 hanging on hand. It’s not much, but the least bit of capital would make you feel independent, and its heartily at your service; and if you don’t like to take it without interest, you can pay me one per cent., and repay me when you’ve made a fortune; and if that doesn’t come till I lay under a stone bed-quilt, you can hand it over to my first godchild.”

That same evening Augusta Aspinall stood before a large oval swing-glass in her luxurious dressing-room, the blazing fire shed its warm glow on polished furniture, amber silk hangings, bright fire-irons, costly mirrors, and expensive toilet ware (of execrable shape). She was robing for a ball at the Assembly Rooms, and Cicily, who, although cook, insisted on retaining her post as lady’s maid on such occasions, had just fastened the last hook of a delicate lilac figured silk as soft as it was lustrous, with swansdown fringing skirt, sleeves, and bodice, as if to show how fair was the symmetrical neck of the wearer to stand such test.

In came Laurence fresh from the Spread Eagle in Hanging Ditch, where he, a newly-elected member of the Scramble Club, had spent the afternoon with one or two others, forgetful that the origin of the club was the fourpenny pie and glass of ale, or at most the slice from a joint despatched in a hurry or “scramble” by business men to whom time was money.

Neither time nor money seemed of much value to Mr. Laurence, who was equally lavish with both, taking as much from his father’s business and adding as little as could well be imagined. His step on the threshold caused Augusta to turn round, beaming and beautiful, and dart towards him, exclaiming—

“I’m so glad you’ve come!” simultaneously with his “Clear out, Cis!” and a warm embrace which somewhat disarranged the dainty dress. His wife was yet a new toy, and his passion had not had time to evaporate. She was a something to admire and exhibit for admiration as a possession of his own; and though her love had received one or two rude shocks, he was still a glorified being in her eyes, and she clung to him as a true wife should cling. She was still but a girl in her teens, proud of the admiration she excited. Disengaging herself, she cried—

“Oh, Laurence, see how you have crushed my swansdown! and now, dear, do make haste and dress, we shall be so late,” and putting the fluffy trimming in order, she unlocked a small jewel case on the table, and took thence the pearls she had worn on her wedding-day.

“What will you say for these, Augusta?” cried he, dangling before her eyes a gossamer scarf and an exquisite ivory fan, whilst his other arm thrown over her white shoulders again threatened the elastic down.

“Oh, Laurence, you are a darling! Where did these beautiful things come from?” and she gave him more than one kiss in payment.

“India, my love: they are ‘far-fetched and dear-bought,’ and so must be good for you, my lady. I met your uncle Chadwick with an old sea-captain, from whom I bought them. By the way, matrimony seems catching. We are invited to a wedding,” and he began leisurely to undress as he spoke.

“A wedding! Whose?”

He laughed.

“Ah, woman all over! I thought I had news for you. Guess!”

In small things as well as great it was his delight to tantalize, so he kept her guessing whilst he proceeded with his toilet, and she began to clasp her pearls on arms and neck, and in her pretty ears.

“Well,” said he at length, “who but your cousin Ellen!”

“Ellen?” She had gone so little near her own family that this was indeed news for her.

“Yes; I thought she meant to die an old maid, but it seems she’s not too proud to wear your cast-off slippers.”

“My cast-off slippers? What do you mean?” and she paused whilst clasping her bracelet with a look of bewildered interrogation.

“Now, Augusta, pray don’t look so innocent!—Your father’s favourite fetch-and-carry, that sneaking, canting fox, Jabez Clegg, finding that Miss Ashton was a sour grape, has straightway gone wooing to Miss Ashton’s cousin as fruit ripe enough and near enough to drop into his vulpine jaws; and by G—— the girl has had no more spirit than to drop when he shook the boughs, rather than hang on untasted!”

The speaker’s lip and nose had curled with contempt as he began, then his nostril dilated, and he struck his wet hand on the washstand with a force which threatened the earthenware and set it jingling.

Augusta was not yet schooled to silence; her generous spirit rose to repel these allegations.

“Oh, Laurence, how can you? Ellen has had plenty of admirers; she has no need to wear anyone’s cast-off shoes. And as for Mr. Clegg! He is no cast-off slip”——she checked herself; a thousand trivial and forgotten things flashed across her mind at once; there was no doubt that Jabez had aspired to her own hand—he must have offered himself to Ellen in pique, to look as if he didn’t care; she could not add the “of mine,” which should have rounded her sentence; she substituted, with barely a moment’s pause, “He is neither a sneak nor a cant, and if Ellen marries him she will have a good husband;” adding, with marvellously little tact or knowledge of her own husband, “I’m sure, Laurence, dear, you have no right to speak ill of the man who saved your life in the very pond that is frozen over now before our doors! And you cannot really think him mercenary, when he refused the £500 your father offered as a reward for his bravery.”

Not lightning was more quick and scathing than the fury which flashed from her husband’s eyes and almost paralysed his tongue, as the last words fell from her lips. With the damp towel in his hand he struck across her beautiful bare shoulders with a force which traced red lines upon their snow; then marked her round arm with a band as red by tearing away the suspended fan and scarf, which he threw behind the fire without one thought of either “far-fetched” or “dear-bought.”

“Soh, madam!” he hissed rather than spoke, whilst Augusta shrank from him in affright, “soh! you dare defend the wretch who played the spy on us at Carr—attacked me, an unarmed man, with a stick, like a coward, and left me bleeding there for dead, hoping to win the heiress for himself!”

From her father and Cicily both she had gathered the truth of that night’s exploits. His misrepresentations no longer misled; but for very fear she held her peace.

He went on—

“Madam, that night’s savage attack cancelled every debt of gratitude I owed the calculating knave who turned his back on my father’s £500, thinking to multiply it by thousands from _your_ father!”

“It is not true!” she dared to say, her sense of justice and her spirit of resistance rising in defence of one she knew to be foully aspersed. Not because he was Jabez Clegg but because he was an absentee maligned.

A shriek rang through the big house, and servants came scurrying up, with Mr. Aspinall in their midst; and Cicily, the first to dash between them, caught on her well-covered back the blow from the madman’s brace, which would else have fallen afresh on the naked shoulders of his wife, already scored by it with livid welts.