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.
The following day saw such another conclave as before in the Grammar
School. Dr. Stone, who was present, picked out the boy who had given
the alarm; and Kit Townley, trembling for himself, told all he knew.
Ben Travis, at the outset, in his indignation, proffered his evidence,
which went to prove malice prepense.
The boys, asked what they had to say for themselves, simply answered
they had done it for “sport”—that they did not mean to throw him over,
but only to frighten him to “hold his tongue,” and excused their
running home on the plea that they were “afraid.” Laurence Aspinall
boldly said that he knew the boy could swim, and did not think a
ducking would do him much harm, and offered to jump off the wall and
swim down the river himself. Liar as well as boaster, he received a
summary check from Dr. Smith, apart from the reprimand administered to
him as the proven ring-leader.
In these days such a case of outrage would have been brought before
a magistrate, and the offenders’ names sent flying through newspaper
paragraphs. Then, whether to spare the parental feelings of such
influential men as Mr. Aspinall, or to save from tarnish the fair fame
of the school, or to avert the further debasement of the boys from
prison contact, and give them a chance to amend, the school tribunal
was allowed to be all-sufficient.
Ignominious expulsion was dealt out not only to Laurence Aspinall and
to Ned Barret, but to each of the conspirators—Kit Townley, honourably
acquitted by them of participation in the final attack, alone escaping
with a caution, a severe reprimand, and as severe a flogging; which
special immunity he had purchased by running white-faced to give the
alarm. It is possible he scarcely estimated the value of that immunity
at the time.
But the loud hurrahs which hailed this sentence testified how the
Grammar School boys valued their honour as a school, and how proud they
were to be purged of such offenders.
Mr. Aspinall, too much agitated to witness his son’s public disgrace,
waited the result of the inquiry in the head-master’s house; and if
ever Laurence Aspinall felt ashamed of his own misconduct, it was
when his father refused to take his unworthy hand as they left the
door-step, and he heard Dr. Smith’s closing words of reproof mingled
with compassion for the father, in whose eyes were signs of tears a bad
son had drawn.
Long before Jabez was able to resume his own place in the school,
Laurence Aspinall had been removed to an expensive boarding-school at
Everton, near Liverpool; and this time the merchant laid stress on his
tendency “for vicious and low pursuits,” and begged that no efforts or
expense might be spared to make him a gentleman in all respects. Still
he tampered with the truth, lest the school-master (he would be called
a Principal in these factitious days) should refuse to admit a pupil
with such antecedents, and decline the task of eradicating cruelty and
ingratitude.
Here Laurence certainly mixed only with boys of his own class, from
whom money could buy neither flattery nor favour, and where only his
own merits could procure either. And here we must leave him, to pursue
the fortunes of the boy whose life he had wantonly imperilled.
Had anything been wanting to bespeak Joshua Brookes’s good-will, Jabez
supplied it when he interfered to protect the elder Brookes from the
derisive indignities of others. Not only to Mrs. Clowes did he rehearse
in his own peculiar manner the story, as told by Ben Travis, with its
supplementary drama which had so nearly proved a tragedy, but at such
tables as he frequented—Mr. Chadwick’s among the rest.
Mr. Ashton, who was present, spoke of being himself a witness to the
former scene, and, whilst presenting his inevitable snuff-box to the
eccentric chaplain, repeated his previous observation—“I must look
after that boy—I must indeed.”
If the parson had been commonly observant he would have noticed a
pair of black eyes fixed in eager attention on his, as he, who rarely
uttered a commendation, held forth in praise of his father’s champion,
the Blue-coat boy; the said black eyes being matched by the black hair,
and somewhat dark skin, of the plain but intelligent daughter of his
host.
But girls of fifteen were then counted in the category of children, and
were taught only to “speak when spoken to,” so Ellen Chadwick passed
no other commentary on the actions of Jabez than was expressed by her
glowing cheeks and eloquent eyes.
CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH.
JABEZ GOES INTO THE WORLD.
A sharp illness followed the precipitation of Jabez into the Irk; but
he was young, had a strong constitution, and, to the satisfaction of
all in the College, and many out of it, was able to take his place in
the refectory, and clear the beef or the potato-pie from his wooden
trencher, before the month expired. Prior to this, he was allowed an
afternoon, ere he was well enough to resume fully his routine duties,
to show himself to the kind friends who had exhibited most anxiety for
his recovery.