Part 8

He had called at the “Packhorse” for a dram, and went on, as was his wont, talking noisily to himself. He had steered round the corner in safety; but hearing one lively voice call out, “Here’s old Fishtail;” and another, “Here’s St. Crispin’s Cripple;” and a third, “Make way for Diogenes,” as he was passing the high-master’s ancient house he gave a lurch, meaning to reprove them solemnly—the top of his rod caught in the prominent pillar of the doorway, and was torn from his insecure grasp. Striving to recover it, he pitched forward, and in falling dropped his basket in the mud, and set the writhing, long-lived fish at liberty to swim in the gutter swollen with recent rain.

The lounging lads at once set up a shout; but Laurence, with a timely recollection that the front of Dr. Smith’s was scarcely the most convenient place for his purpose, winked at his companions, and, with an aspect of mock commiseration, politely assisted the old man to rise, begged the others to capture the eels and carry the basket for him, and, under pretence of putting the angler’s rod in order, contrived to fasten the hook to the end of his old-fashioned pigtail.

Then he helped his unsteady steps until they were fairly out of Dr. Smith’s sight and hearing; but they did not suffer him to reach his son’s house before they showed their true colours. Loosing his hold, Laurence snatched at the rod, and, darting with it towards the College gate, cried out in high glee, “I’ve been fishing; look at the fine snig (eel) I’ve caught!” And, as he capered about, he dragged the poor old cripple hither and thither backwards by his pigtail, to which hook and line were attached.

Old Brookes screamed in impotent rage and pain; the boys laughed and shouted the louder. The one with his basket set it on his head, and paraded about, crying, “Who’ll buy my snigs? Fine fresh snigs!” with the nasal drawl of a genuine fish-seller.

Once or twice the old man fell down, uttering awful threats and imprecations; but Laurence only laughed the more, and jerked him up again with a smart twitch of the line, which was a strong one; and the other three or four young ruffians put up their shoulders, and limped about singing—

“The fishes drink water, Old Crispin drinks gin; But the fishes come out When the hook he throws in. Tol de rol.”

It may be wondered that none of the neighbours interfered. But it must be remembered that they were accustomed, not only to the uproar of a boyish multitude, but to the drunken ravings of Old Brookes, who was an intolerable nuisance. Public traffic then was not as now, and policemen were unborn.

The satisfaction of Laurence was at its height. He kept hold of the line; one of his comrades, named Barret, lashed the persecuted man with an eel for a whip, and their mirth was boisterous, when Jabez (now thirteen) came quietly through the wicket on an errand from the governor.

He took in the scene at a glance. He could not stand by and see injustice done. His dark eyes flashed with indignation as he dashed forward, pulling the line from the hand of Laurence, and tried to disentangle the cruel hook from the unfortunate pigtail.

“Who asked you to interfere, you petticoated jackanapes?” bawled Laurence, darting forward, his face as red as his hair, at the same time dealing Jabez a heavy blow on the chest.

“My duty!” answered Jabez, stoutly, taking no notice of the sneer at himself. “How could you gentlemen torment a poor old cripple like that?”

“He’s a drunken old sot!” cried Barret.

“It’s downright cruel!” continued Jabez, as he stood between the jabbering drunkard and his tormentors.

“We’re no more cruel than he is! He’s been catching fishes all day. We’ve only given him a taste of his own hook; and we’ll have none of your meddling!” and out went the pugilistic arm of Laurence straight from the shoulder to deal another blow, when it was caught from behind by the bony hand of Ben Travis, bigger and stronger by two year’s growth, whilst the other hand gripped his jacket collar.

“So you’re at your cowardly tricks again, Aspinall!” exclaimed he, holding the other as if in a vice. “But if I see you lay another finger on that lad, I’ll report you to Dr. Smith.”

“Oh! you’d turn sneak, would you?” sneered Laurence, striving to twist himself loose, and disordering his broad white frill in the endeavour.

“I’d think I did the Grammar School a service to turn either you or Barret out of it, I would! Think of you setting on that noble chap who wouldn’t turn tell-tale, though he’ll carry the mark of your boot to his grave with him!”

Pointing with outstretched hand to Jabez, who by this time was handing Old Brookes over to the grumbling care of Tabitha, and whose right eyebrow yet showed a red seam, Travis relaxed his hold of Laurence, and he shook himself free.

Some warm altercation followed. There was a scowl of sullen defiance on Aspinall’s face, and an evil glance towards Jabez, which Travis observing, with a significant nod he linked his arm in that of the Blue-coat boy, and never left him till he reached his destination, Mr. Hyde’s ancient and picturesque tea-shop in Market-street Lane.

CHAPTER THE TWELFTH.

THE GENTLEMAN.

That afternoon a gentleman who had witnessed part of the foregoing scene from the breeches-maker’s window, whither he had gone for a pair of buckskin riding-gloves—struck by the dauntless manner of Jabez, related what he had seen to his wife, Mrs. Ashton, the stately sister of Mrs. Chadwick; whilst Augusta, their eight-year old daughter, sat on a footstool by her side, hemming a bandana handkerchief for her father, an inveterate snuff-taker—occasionally putting in a word, as only spoiled daughters did in those days.

“Mamma, I daresay that’s the little boy Cousin Ellen told me about.”

“Pooh, pooh! Augusta,” said Mr. Ashton, tapping the lid of his snuff-box, and then, from force of habit, handing it to his wife, the wave of whose hand put it back—“pooh, pooh! child. Do you think there’s only one Blue-coat boy in the town? Besides, he was not such a little boy. I know I thought something of myself when I was his size,” said Mr. Ashton, dusting the snuff from his ruffles as he spoke.

“But he would be a little boy when Ellen knew him first. She says it was before I was born.”

“He could not be a Blue-coat boy then, my dear,” observed Mrs. Ashton; “he was too young.”

“But Ellen showed him to me when we went to the College at Easter; and she says he has killed a snake—a real live snake, papa. And Aunt Chadwick bought Ellen such a pretty pincushion he had worked, and, oh! such a handsome bead purse!”

Mr. Ashton smiled at his daughter’s enthusiasm.

“Ah! I think I have heard of him before; he is a sort of _protege_ of Parson Brookes.”

“He is a very honest boy,” appended Mrs. Ashton, as she examined Augusta’s hemming by the light of the nearest wax candle. “Ellen lost Prince William’s shilling that same day. You know she always wears it dangling from her neck, absurd as it is for a great girl of fifteen.”

“Well?” said Augusta, looking up inquiringly.

“Well, my dear, the very next afternoon the boy Jabez Clegg knocked at the door in Oldham Street with the shilling, which he said he had found in sweeping the library, and remembered seeing it on Miss Chadwick’s neck. Many a boy, at Easter, would have spent it in cakes or toffy.”

“I suppose, to use one of your favourite maxims, he must have thought ‘honesty the best policy,’” remarked her husband.

“Yes; and ‘duty its own reward’—for he refused the half-crown that Sarah offered him.”

Mr. Ashton took another pinch of snuff, with grave consideration, then put the box, after some deliberation, into his deep waistcoat pocket, and again flapped the snuff off ruffles and neck-cloth ends.

“Wouldn’t take the money, you say?”

“Would not take it,” his wife repeated, folding up the finished handkerchief.

After a pause, Mr. Ashton said, with his head on one side,—

“I think I shall look after that younker. What is he like?”

“Oh, that I cannot tell; I was not with them. But I think Sarah said he had got an ugly scar on one of his eyebrows.”

Mr. Ashton brought down his hand with a clap on that of Augusta, resting on his knee.

“Then, my little Lancashire witch, the poor cripple’s champion and Ellen’s hero of romance _will_ be one and the same. I must certainly look after that lad.”

But even as Mr. Ashton came to that conclusion Jabez was in mortal peril, and his romance and theirs threatened to end at the beginning.

Laurence Aspinall was not of a temper to brook interference with his sport, or to be treated as the inferior of a “common charity boy.” Since the hour that Jabez had declined to single him out for punishment, he had resented the sense of his own inferiority which conscience pressed upon him. In refusing to tender either thanks or apology at Ben Travis’s instigation, he lost caste in the school, and the knowledge rankled in his breast. Against the debt of gratitude he owed to Jabez he laid up a fund of envy and spite, out of which he meant to pay him in full the first opportunity. That opportunity had arrived. There were some birds of his own feather, who stuck by him, of whom Ned Barret was one.

Old Brookes had been too drunk to swear positively who had molested him, or to obtain credence if he did; but the inopportune arrival of Jabez and Ben Travis had made detection certain, and nothing was Joshua Brookes so sure to punish with severity as an attack on the father who made his life a burden to him.

On the principle that they might “as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb,” the noble five resolved to waylay the Blue-coat boy on his return, and either extract from him a promise of secrecy, or give him a sound drubbing for his pains.

They were too like-minded for long conference. To put the old breeches-maker off the scent, all dispersed but one, Kit Townley, who pulled a top from his pocket and whipped away at it with as much energy as ever did his Anglo-Saxon ancestors. Perhaps he thought he had a meddlesome College boy under his lash.

After a time, the others sauntered back one by one, from contrary directions; there was more top-whipping, and some of the whips and tops were new. Then when they saw they were unobserved, they adjourned to the school-yard, and laying a cap on the broad step, two or three of them sat down to a game at cob-nut, so that if any unlikely straggler did come that way there might be an apparent reason for their presence.

It was late in the year. The breeches-maker was seated at his early tea, and so were most of his neighbours. The twilight was coming gently down, and the boys, tired of waiting, were about to go home to their own—Aspinall expecting a reprimand for being late. Jabez, who had been delayed at the office of Harrop the printer in the Market Place, came briskly up with a parcel in his hand just as they reached the gate. One of them snatched the parcel from him and ran with it into the school-yard. As a natural consequence Jabez followed to regain his property.

That was just what they wanted. The light iron gate was pushed-to, and there they were, shut in and screened from observation, between the deserted Grammar School on the one hand, and the College School-room on the other, which, with the dormitory above, was equally sure to be empty at that hour. They were free to torment him as they pleased. The parcel was tossed from hand to hand with subdued glee, and their whip-lashes and strung cob-nuts cut at his arms and shoulders, as Jabez sprang forward and darted hither and thither, perplexed and baffled in his efforts to recover it. Once or twice it went down on the damp ground, and gained in grime what it lost in shape.

“Oh! dear, dear! do give me my parcel!” cried Jabez, in perplexity. “Our governor will think I’ve been loitering.”

“And so you have, you canting yellow-skirt. You stopped to put your long finger in our pie!” was the swift retort of Laurence, as he interposed his body between Jabez and the boy who held his lost charge.

“Eh! and you went off with Travis, wasting your time!” added Kit Townley.

“I never waste my time on an errand.”

“Oh! Miss Nancy never wastes time on an errand.” mimicked Ned Barret; and still they kept the boy on the run until he leaned, out of breath, against the wall which served as a parapet above the river.

Then, the disputed prize being kept by Kit Townley at a respectable distance, Laurence advanced to parley with him, offering to restore his parcel and let him go if he would take a solemn oath, which he dictated, to maintain silence on all which had transpired that afternoon.

“I cannot; I must account for my time,” firmly answered Jabez, “and I must account for that dirty parcel.”

“Tell them you tumbled down and hurt yourself,” suggested Aspinall.

“I cannot; it would be untrue!”

At this the lads set up a loud guffaw, as if truth were somewhat out of fashion; but the one who stood nearest the gate with the parcel looked restless, as if beginning to be tired of the whole business. Just then Laurence went blustering up to the College boy, and, thrusting his face forward, said—

“If you don’t go down on your marrow-bones this instant, and swear to tell no tales, we’ll pitch you over the wall.”

“You dare not!” boldly retorted Jabez, with a set face.

“Oh! daren’t we? We’ll see that! Lend a hand.”

“No, you dare not!” repeated he, planting himself firmly against the wall.

There was a sudden rush; they closed round him, more in bravado than with any intent to do him bodily harm: sliding him up against the smooth-worn brick-work, they hoisted him above their shoulders, meaning to hold him there. But in their eagerness they had thrust him too far, and crowding on each other, one, being jostled, let go, and Jabez toppled over the precipice!

There was a scream; a splash in the water. Tabitha, taking clothes from a line in the back-yard, cried out, “What is that?” Parson Brookes’s startled pigeons flew from their dove-cote, and wheeling round in widening circles cooed affrightedly.

The white-faced boys stood aghast. Unless his fall had been seen from the opposite croft, their victim would be drowned before any aid they could bring was available; a wide circuit must be taken before a bridge could be reached! Buildings blocked up that side of the river. They looked at each other and spoke in whispers; then, with an animal instinct of self-preservation, sneaked off in silence and terror, leaving him to his fate.

Not all. Kit Townley, who held the parcel, had drawn near to remonstrate. With a shriek he threw down the paper, and, hardly conscious what he did, tore wildly through the gates, and across the College Yard, to startle the first he met with the alarm that a College boy was drowning in the Irk!

CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH.

SIMON’S PUPIL.

It was fortunate for Jabez that the late rains had raised the level of the Irk: otherwise, that being the shallowest part of the stream, there would not have been sufficient depth of water to buoy him up when he was pitched over the wall; and had his head come in contact with rock or stone, falling from such an elevation, his history would have closed with the last chapter. It was doubly fortunate that sensible Simon had taught him that without which no boy’s education—nor, indeed, any girl’s either—is complete, and that Jabez, from very love of the water, had kept himself in practice whenever a holiday had given him opportunity.

He had gone over the wall backwards, falling into the stream head downwards, but not altogether unprepared; and to him head first, heels first, forward or backward, were all as one. Like a cork he rose, and struck out across the river. The slimy stone embankment seemed to slip from his touch; there was no hold for his hand; it was too steep and smooth to climb; and he felt that the river, swift in its fulness, was bent on bearing him to the Irwell, so dangerously near.

He raised his voice for “help.” Tabitha, listening, answered with a scream and a shout, and, bolting into the house, disturbed the Parson and his besotted father at their tea by the outcry she made, as she rushed on into the street with the alarm of “a lad dreawndin,” just as the conscious culprits slunk past to their own quarters.

Doctor Stone, the first recipient of terrified Kit Townley’s incoherent intelligence, was simultaneously racing at full speed, with a troop of College boys at his heels, down towards Hunt’s Bank and the outlet of the Irk, with the swift consciousness that the only hope of saving life was in the chance of reaching the confluence of the rivers first. He thought the dusk never came down so rapidly. A lamplighter, with ladder and flaring long-spouted oil-can light, was going his rounds.

“Turn back, my man, with ladder and light,” he called out, without stopping; and the man, seeing something unusual was astir or amiss, followed at a canter without question.

At Irk Bridge the librarian took the light from the man, and swung it to cast its reflection over the Irwell; but nothing was to be seen or heard but the full river, and the wash of its waters. To cross the bridge, in fear that the boy was beyond help, was but the work of a moment.

Slower, along the wooden railing of the Irk embankment, he held the lamp low. There was neither eddy or bubble on the water to tell where a drowning mortal had gone down.

“Jabez! Jabez Clegg!” he cried, but there was no response. Again and again he raised his voice—“Jabez! Jabez!” The only answer was from an advancing crowd, with Parson Brookes and Tabitha in their midst, who had rushed to the rescue with ropes and poles down the bridge at Mill Brow.

“I fear it’s no use, Parson Brookes,” said the librarian sadly; “the river’s high, and poor Jabez may have been drifting past Stannyhurst before we were out of the College Yard.”

“Jabez!” exclaimed Joshua aghast, “you cannot mean that Jabez Clegg is the boy drowned!” and he staggered as if some one had struck him.

“Indeed, Parson, if this boy speaks truth, I fear it is so,” and he turned to question his informant; but Kit Townley, seeing his impulsive schoolmaster approach, had edged away, and was gone.

Gruff Joshua drew the back of his hand across his shaggy brows.

“And so the greedy river has swallowed the bright lad at last! He was a boy of promise, Dr. Stone, and his untimely fate is a—a—trouble to me;” and the rough Parson’s harsh voice shook with emotion. “I baptised him, Doctor, and I hoped to see him grow up a credit to us all.”

They, and the dispersing crowd, seeing the uselessness of longer stay, were moving on towards Mill Brow as he spoke.

“Who’s this?” he cried as they neared the bridge, and a working woman, her hair flying loose from the kerchief on her head, rushed across it with an impetus gained in the steep descent.

It was Bess, with Simon at her heels, close as his stiff rheumatic limbs would carry him. She wrung her hands bitterly.

“Is it true?” she cried in anguish, “is it true? Oh, Parson Brucks, is it true that ar Jabez is dreawnded?”

There was the same choking in his voice as he answered—

“I’m afraid so, Bess.”

Simon’s voice now broke in.

“But are yo’ sartain, Parson? Ar Jabez couldn swim loike a duck. An’ how cam he i’ th’ wayther, aw shouldn loike to know?”

“Swim, did you say?” interrogated Dr. Stone. “Then there may be hope yet. If the eddies would not let him land at Waterworth Field, he might swim ashore at Stannyhurst.”

“Pray God it be so!” ejaculated Bess, from a full heart.

Dr. Stone, hurrying forward, continued:

“Follow me to the College for lanterns to renew the search.” And no second invitation was needed.

And where was Jabez? He heard Tabitha’s cry, but it came from the wrong side, and he had sense to know was useless to save, unless he could withstand the current till help came round. But the strong stream was bearing him on against his will. Suddenly he bethought him of the dairy steps, and, with a stroke of his left arm, swerved towards the hoary building looming through the twilight. One moment later, and the steps had been passed, not to be recovered, for the current was stronger than he; but that providentially abrupt turn, and a few skilful strokes, brought him upon them. Literally upon them, for the water was within a step or two of the door. With difficulty he obtained a footing, they were so slippery. Once above the water, he hammered at the door and called, but his voice was weakened by exertion and the shivering consequent on cold, wet, clinging garments. Again and again he knocked and called, but everyone was out in the quadrangle, or away in search of him, and no one heard.

He had been excited and over-heated in his prolonged struggle with his persecutors, and, short as was the distance he swam, his efforts to stem the overmastering current had exhausted him. Cold and exposure did the rest. He sank on the topmost step with his head against the door, in the angle it formed with the wall, his feet in the water; and there he lay, too faint to respond when Dr. Stone’s voice fell on his ear as on that of a dreamer. His dark robe, his position, the jutting wall—all contributed to hide him from the poor rays of the one oil-lamp which was flashed along the stream to find him.

And there he might have lain and died had not Nancy, for lack of a boy at hand to wait on her, gone down to the cellar for milk for the boys’ supper. As she filled the wooden piggin she had taken with her, she fancied she heard a moan, and listening breathless, heard another, and another, from the outside of a door which was (to her thought) inaccessible to mortal.

Down went the piggin and the milk (she was not a strong-minded woman, and it was a superstitious age), up the steps she stumbled in her fright, crying—

“Oh! theer’s a boggart in th’ dairy!—theer’s a boggart!”

Dr. Stone and his companions came in at the porch as she fled upwards towards the kitchen. The firelight gleaming on her frightened face caught his attention. Half fainting, she repeated her exclamation, adding—

“It moaned like summat wick.”

“Moaned, did you say? Goodness! If it should be——”

Not stopping to finish his sentence, he snatched a light from the table, and was unbolting the cellar-door before the governor or anyone else could comprehend his movements. They understood well enough when he came back into their midst, burdened with the limp, dripping form of Jabez, white and insensible, and depositing him on a settle near the kitchen fire, cried out for restoratives.

That was a terrible next morning, when the young miscreants, as much afraid to play truant as to face possibilities at school, sneaked to their places and set to their studies with industry out of the common. Laurence Aspinall, boarding with a master, had no choice in the matter.

How Jabez got into the water was not clear; he was too ill to be questioned over-night, and was in a fever and delirious by noon the next day. But he had never been known to loiter or go astray when sent on an errand. Kit Townley’s impulsive cry of alarm had suggested foul play, and neither Joshua Brookes nor Governor Terry had let the night pass without an effort to dive into the truth.

Dr. Stone had conjectured Kit Townley to be a Grammar School boy, although personally unknown to him; and that conjecture recalled to Joshua his father’s ravings of ill-usage, which he had at the time regarded as drunken maudling. It was ascertained that the boy had been at Harrop’s. Inquiry, and the search for the missing parcel, resulted in the discovery of a trampled play-ground, broken whiplashes, a string of cob-nuts, and, neatly marked in red cotton with his initials, one of Laurence Aspinall’s cambric ruffles, torn and muddy.

There was a conference with Dr. Jeremiah Smith before the night was out. A messenger was sent to Mr. Aspinall in Cannon Street the next morning, as well as to the trustees of the school.