within the area of the College, had found their way to his bedside.
Grateful for kindness from so unlikely a quarter, Jabez paid his first
visit to the shop in Half Street, to thank the queer old lady. But not
one word of thanks would she hear.
“Eh, lad, say naught about it; you did your duty, and I did mine, and
so were quits;” and shook her open hand a few inches in advance of her
face, as if she were shaking a disclaimer out of it. “And where are you
taking your white face to now?” she asked quickly, the better to turn
the tide of his stammering thanks.
“To Aunt Bess’s.”
“Why, lad, Bess Clegg’ll have naught to give thee fit for sick folk to
eat. It’s much to me if she’ll have either a potato or a drop of milk.
If she’s a bit of jannock, or oat-cake, it’s as much as the bargain.
War may be glorious for kings and generals, but it’s awful for poor
folk; Mesters can’t sell their goods, and can’t pay wages bout money;
and I’ve heard that, since th’ potato riots in Shudehill last Spring,
the folk have been so clemmed that some on them couldna be known by
their friends who hadna seen them for awhile; they were naught but skin
and bone, poor things!”
Whilst indulging in this tirade against war and its concomitants, to
distract his attention, she bustled about, often with her back to him;
then dived into her parlour, and returned with a basket, which she was
handing to him, with a charge to “take that to Bess, and be sure bring
the basket back safe,” when she found that Joshua Brookes was standing
behind Jabez, amongst waiting customers, with a sharp eye on her
proceedings.
“I say, young Cheat-the-fishes, what have you got to say for yourself?
A nice young ragamuffin you are, to go a-bathing without leave,
spoiling your clothes, and giving yourself cold! I hope they gave you
plenty of physic, to teach you better,” said Joshua roughly, taking the
boy by the shoulder, and turning him sharply round to confront him.
“Yes, sir—they gave me plenty of physic,” said Jabez, doffing his
cap respectfully. “But I did not go bathing; I got into the water by
accident.”
“By what? Do you call that an accident?” growled the parson, to get at
the boy’s meaning.
“An accident done a-purpose,” chimed in Mrs. Clowes, whilst her scales
jingled, and she and her helper weighed out her commodities for the
people at the counter.
“Yes, sir,” answered Jabez, composedly; “it must have been an accident.
I don’t think they really could mean to push me over. I think they only
meant to frighten me——”
“Well?” queried Joshua, seeing that he hesitated.
“I think one of them slipped, and let go, and then I slipped too, sir,”
he replied, modestly.
“Slipped, indeed! You’d very nearly slipped into the next world!”
exclaimed the parson. “I suppose you’ll say next that my poor old
father was dragged about by the young wretches by accident too?”
The colour of Jabez rose.
“No, sir; that was very cruel.”
“Oh, you do call some things by their right names (here, let that woman
pass out). I suppose you’re glad enough the rascals have got their
deserts?”
A dubious change came over the boy’s face. He did not answer at once;
he hardly knew his own feelings on the subject. The question was
repeated.
“Well, sir, I’m glad they won’t be there to torment me any more, but it
must be a very dreadful thing for a young gentleman to be turned out of
school in disgrace, and I don’t think I _ought_ to be glad of that. I
should never get over it, if it was me.”
“Here, take your basket, and be off with you!” said Joshua Brookes,
hurrying him out of the shop, that he might stay and rate the old woman
for “spoiling young Cheat-the-fishes,” conscious all the while that he
had been doing his best to get the lad a good home in the future.
Bess and Simon received him with open arms, glad not only to see him
well again, but thankful he had been placed where he was secure from
the bitter want which pinched both their stomachs and their faces. To
them Mrs. Clowes’ basket brought what they had not seen for months—a
white loaf and a good lump of cold meat, to say nothing of a tiny paper
of tea, and some sugar—those luxuries of the rich—and half-a-crown in
another paper.
How those half-famishing hard-workers, whose home had been denuded of
their goods to keep life within them, thanked cross old Mrs. Clowes!
She had made it a festival to them indeed, and all for the sake of the
boy they had kept.
There were no pigeons—these had been sold long ago to pay for
provisions, though much against Simon’s will. The cat was there, lean
and gaunt; it managed to pick up a subsistence somehow; and the big
Bible was there—Simon had not parted with that, though the bright
bureau was gone, ay, and the cradle which had been an ark to the orphan.
The change touched Jabez sorely. Snugly housed and fed within the
College, rumours of outer poverty made no lasting impression; but
here he saw its grim reality, and sitting down on the three-legged
stool, he covered his face with his hands to hide the tears called up
by that insight into their impoverished condition. Yet had they some
alleviation of their pain. Poverty appeared to have lost half its
bitterness for Bess. She had had a letter from her long-mourned Tom,
and the joyful news served to brighten up the visit for Jabez and all.
It was a long and deeply repentant letter, of course written by a
comrade. It was dated from Badajoz, and had been a weary while in
reaching them. He had been wounded in that brilliant assault, and while
in hospital had fallen in with another Lancashire lad, also wounded—no
other than the boy who had lent a hand to rescue the infant Jabez, and
who had been driven to enlist by the sharp pangs of hunger, only two
years before. From this young fellow, Private John Smith (Tom was
himself a Corporal), he had learned how grievously his Bess had been
slandered; but with that knowledge had come the conviction that he had
condemned her hastily and harshly on mere hearsay, and the letter was
incoherent in its remorseful contrition. In his soldier-life he had
been tossed hither and thither—known pain, and thirst, and famine; and
said he owed it all to his own jealous credulity, when he ought to
have known so much better. He told of marchings and counter-marchings,
battles and bloodshed; but of never one wound to himself, though
he had not “cared a cast of the shuttle” for his life until that
bayonet-thrust which had laid him side by side with John Smith, who had
lost an eye. But he wound up with a prayer for Bess and himself, and a
hope for their reunion, if the war would ever end. He “was sick of it.”
All that letter was to Bess and Simon, Jabez could not comprehend; but
he took Mrs. Clowes her empty basket, and went back to the College
satisfied that one ray of sunshine lit up the poor home of his friends.
And Matthew Cooper’s last chance was gone.
* * * * *
Mr. Ashton was what is known in trade as a small-ware manufacturer—that
is, he was a weaver of tapes, inkles, filletings; silk, cotton, and
worsted laces (for furniture); carpet bindings, brace-webs, and
fringes. Moreover, he manufactured braces and umbrellas, for which
latter his brother-in-law supplied the ginghams. He had at work, both
in Manchester and at Whaley-Bridge, a number of swivel-engines, the
design of which came from those unrivalled tape-weavers, the Dutch, and
which would weave twenty-four lengths of tape or bed-lace at one time.
Otherwise, the bulk of his workpeople—winders, warpers, brace, fringe,
and umbrella-makers—carried away materials to their own homes, and
brought back their work in a finished state.
Mr. Chadwick, as we have mentioned, was a manufacturer of ginghams—this
included checks and fustians; but much of his trade being foreign, the
war had locked up his resources, and his anxieties preyed on his health.
Mr. Ashton had suffered less in this particular, not having disdained
to take his sensible wife’s advice—“Never put too many eggs in one
basket.” Mrs. Ashton, be it said, had a leaning towards “proverbial
philosophy” more homely and terse than Tupper’s, which, vulgar as
it is accounted now, was in esteem when our century was young; and,
had it been otherwise, would have been equally impressive from her
deliberately modulated utterance. This same lady had, moreover, an
aptitude for business. Mr. Ashton employed a number of young women, and
Mrs. Ashton might be found most days in the warehouse, either “putting
out” or inspecting the work brought in by them, with a gingham wrapper
over her “silken sheen.” If the footman announced visitors, the wrapper
was thrown aside in a moment, and she stepped into her drawing-room
as though fresh from her toilette, and with no atmosphere of dozens,
grosses, or great-grosses about her.
She was wont to say, “The eye of a master does more work than both his
hands,” accordingly in house or warehouse her active supervision kept
other hands from idling, and she certainly dignified whatever duties
she undertook, whether she used hands or eyes only.
In those days a seven-years’ apprenticeship to any trade or business
was deemed essential; apprentices were part and parcel of commercial
economy, and when Mr. Ashton spoke of “looking after that boy,” it was
that he thought Jabez Clegg bade fair to be a fitter inmate and a more
reliable servant than others whose terms were about to expire.
Through his friend the Rev. Joshua Brookes he ascertained the boy’s age
and other particulars, and sought the House-Governor Mr. Terry, and
laid before him a proposition to take Jabez Clegg as his apprentice,
on very fair terms. He then learned that Mr. Shaw, the saddler at the
bottom of Market Street-lane, was also desirous to obtain the same
Blue-coat boy as an apprentice, his friend the leather-breeches maker
having named the lad to him.
At the Easter meeting of feoffees both proposals were laid before
them—Simon Clegg, as standing _in loco parentis_ to Jabez, being
present. After some little discussion Mr. Ashton’s proposal was
accepted, to the great satisfaction of the tanner, and in a few
days Jabez was transferred to his new master for mutual trial until
Ascension Day, when, if all parties were satisfied, his indentures
would be signed. As the governor said, it had “been but the toss of a
button” whether he had gone to Mr. Shaw or Mr. Ashton:—yet upon that
toss of a button the whole future of Jabez depended.
Jabez Clegg entered on his new career under good auspices—that is,
he bore with him a good character for steadiness and probity, though
nothing was said of brilliant parts, or any special talent which he
possessed. Indeed his school-master had said that only his indomitable
perseverence had enabled him to keep pace with others. If he had any
latent genius, any particular vocation, no one had discovered it;
his faculty for disfiguring doors and walls with devices in coloured
chalks, picked up amongst the gravel, had been matter for punishment
not praise, and none but the College boys themselves cared to know
where the fresh patterns for purses and pincushions came from.
Steadiness, perseverance, probity—they were good materials out of which
to manufacture a tradesman (so Mr. Ashton thought), and congratulations
were mutual.
Jabez went, with his new outfit, to his new home under good auspices,
inasmuch as both master and mistress were pre-possessed in his favour,
and they stood in the foremost ranks of those who began to recognise
that English apprentices were not bond-slaves in heathendom. Instead
of being crammed to sleep like dogs in holes under counters; left to
wash at a pump and wipe themselves where they could; obliged to sit at
a table in a back kitchen, and dip their spoons into one common dish
of porridge, or potatoes and buttermilk; to eat such scraps and refuse
as sordid employers, or ill-disposed cooks, chose to set before their
primitive Adamite forks—instead of a system like this, from which
apprentices (of whatever grade) only emerged at the beginning of this
century, the Ashtons’ apprentices had a comfortable dormitory in the
attic, there was a coarse jack-towel by the scullery-sink for their
use, they had their meals with the servants in the kitchen, where was
an oak settle by the fire for them when work was over.
But work did not end with the close of the warehouse. They were
expected to keep their attic clean and in order, to cleanse the wooden
or pewter platters, or porringers, from which they had dined or supped;
to rinse the horns which had held their table-beer; to fetch and carry
wood, coals, and water, for servants too lazy to do their own work; and
it was not much rest any apprentice had from five or six in a morning
until eight or nine at night, when he went to his bed.
As the youngest apprentice, the roughest of this work fell on Jabez,
but, luckily, his training had made him equal to the occasion; though
Kezia, the red-faced cook, set herself steadfastly to dislike him,
because Mr. Ashton had bespoken her favour for him. In the warehouse,
too, the evident good-will of principals roused the jealously of
underlings, so that “good auspices” had their corresponding drawbacks.
It was not much of a pleasure to Jabez to find Kit Townley also seated
as an apprentice on the kitchen settle; but the youth seemed disposed
to be friendly, and Jabez forbore to create a grievance by recalling
unpleasant reminiscences. With Kit Townley, who was his senior by a
year, a heavy premium had been paid, and on this he was inclined to
presume. But neither Mr. nor Mrs. Ashton made any social distinction
between the twain, and Jabez was strong enough to hold his own.
During the few weeks’ probation Jabez was transferred from department
to department, alike to test his capacity and his own liking for the
business. Both proved satisfactory.
On Ascension Day, 1813, there was another appearance in that ancient
room before the College magnates, many of whom, as officers in
volunteer regiments, were in full-dress uniform (a dinner pending). The
indentures had to be signed, the premium of £4 (returnable to the boy
when his term expired) had to be paid.
Simon Clegg’s best clothes had long been lost in the pawnbroker’s
bottomless pit: but some one unknown (mayhap Mrs. Clowes or Mrs.
Clough) had sent him overnight a suit of fresh ones, pronounced by
him and Bess “welly as good as new;” and he presented himself for the
important ceremony (overlooked by the painted face of the orphan’s
benevolent friend, Humphrey Chetham) as proud almost of his own
restored respectability as of the part he was about to perform. When it
came to his turn to sign the document, the little man took the pen with
a flourish, as if he were a hero about to perform some mighty action.
He stooped to the heavy oaken table, bent his head low, alternately to
the right and left, and with his fingers in an unaccountable crump,
imprinted his self-taught signature in Roman capitals thereon, then
handed back the quill as if to say, “The deed is done!”
Governor, school-master, and feoffees congratulated Mr. Ashton and
Jabez both. Simon, with moist eyes, shook Jabez by the hand, and
holding the boy’s shoulder with his left to look the better in his
clear dark eyes, said with deliberate emphasis—
“Jabez, lad, aw’m preawd on yo’ this day. But moind—thah’s an
honourable neame: do nowt to disgrace it, an’ yo’r fortin’s made!”
Jabez was too abashed to make reply at the time; but at the supper
given in the kitchen, to mark his installation at Mr. Ashton’s—to which
Bess and Simon were both invited—Jabez contrived to whisper,
“You needn’t clem any more, Bess; I’ll give you all my wages.”
CHAPTER THE FIFTEENTH.
APPRENTICESHIP.
Jabez now began his work in earnest, in the packing-room—the very
lowest rung of the ladder. Not long did he remain there. The bright
colours in the lace and brace rooms had an attraction for him, and he
argued with himself that the better he did the rough work assigned him
the sooner he should mount above it. And Jabez the plodding Blue-coat
boy, was ambitious. That ambition had a threefold stimulus.
Manchester people were then, as a rule, steady church and chapel-goers.
Mr. Ashton had two pews at the Old Church; one for his family, the
other for servants and apprentices, the attendance of the latter being
imperative. Jabez thus came in frequent contact with his old-time
friends, from the Blue-coat boys in the Chetham Gallery to the Cleggs,
to whom went every penny of his earnings; their distress, like that of
others, having deepened with the continuation of the Napoleonic war.
Sometimes old Mrs. Clowes, meeting him in the churchyard, would grasp
him by the hand, and leave something in it, as, in her old black
stuff dress and coloured kerchief tied over her mob-cap, she hurried
homewards to scold dilatory handmaids, and put her Christianity in
practice amongst her pensioners.
Now and then Joshua Brookes crossed his path, and if he did not put his
hand in his breeches pocket for Jabez—now a well-grown youth—he gave
him more than sterling coin in sterling advice, though, unfortunately,
in so abrupt and grotesque a manner, its effect was frequently lost.
Yet one day when the Blue-coat boy had been barely two years at the
Mosley Street manufacturer’s, he put a spur into the sides of his
ambition.
“Young Cheat-the-fishes, were you ever in Mrs. Chadwick’s green
parlour?”
“Yes, sir—I was there once for half-an-hour.” (The day he took back
Miss Ellen’s shilling.)
“Well did you read the sermons on the walls?”
Jabez answered respectfully—
“I did not see any sermons, sir. I saw some pictures in black frames
with gilt roses at the corners.”
“And didn’t look at them, I suppose?” in a harsh grunt.
“Yes, sir, I did! I was waiting till Mrs. Chadwick had done dinner.
They were about two boys—a good and bad apprentice.”
“Oh, then, you did use your eyes! The next time they let you inside
that room, just use your understanding too. William Hogarth, the
artist, from his grave preaches a sermon to you and your fellows, as
good as Parson Gatliffe preached from the pulpit this morning, mark
that!” and he turned on his heel with an emphasising nod to fix _his_
sermon on the boy’s mind.
The opportunity came before long. It was customary when an apprentice
went with a message to leave him in the hall, or send him into the
kitchen; but Jabez being sent by Mrs. Ashton with several samples of
furniture-binding and fringes for her sister’s use, he was shown with
his parcel into the parlour, where Mrs. Chadwick, neatly attired in a
brown stuff dress, with a French cambric kerchief lying in folds under
the square bodice, sat at work with an upholsteress, in the midst of a
mass of chintz and moreen, preparing for the new home of Ellen’s elder
sister Charlotte; for, in spite of war, distress, or famine, people
will marry and give in marriage. And had not a glorious peace just been
concluded?
Ellen, a comely but not pretty girl, about seventeen, whose black eyes
and hair were her chief attractions, sat there in a purple bombazine
dress, with her sheathed scissors and College pincushion suspended by
a chain from her girdle, plying her needle most industriously. He was
not accustomed to parlours, and no doubt his bow was as awkward as his
blush; but he had a message to deliver, and he did that in a business
like manner. He had to wait until pattern after pattern was tried
against the chintz, and calculations made. Mrs. Chadwick, seeing his
eyes wander wistfully from picture to picture, courteously gave him
permission to examine them.
At once Ellen, who was sitting close under one, rose to act as
interpreter. She was recalled by the mild voice of her mother.
“Sit down, Ellen; Jabez Clegg does not require a young lady’s help to
understand those pictures—they explain themselves.”
Ellen went back to her seat and her sewing with a raised colour, and a
private impression that the rebuke was uncalled for, though she spoke
never a word. Perhaps Mrs. Chadwick thought condescension should have
its limits, and did not believe in a young lady’s impulsive civility to
an apprentice Blue-coat boy. Yet that was not like Mrs. Chadwick.
Miss Augusta had been staying with her aunt. Part of his commission
was to convoy her home; she was an only child, and too precious to
be trusted out alone, though she was in her eleventh year, and the
distance was nothing. But so many desperadoes had been let loose by the
termination of the war that crime and violence were rampant, footpads
infested highways and byways, and Cicily, Augusta’s maid—ex-nurse—was
no longer deemed a protection.
He stood before the last engraving when Augusta—in no awe of her
father’s apprentice—came dancing into the room in a nankeen dress and
tippet, a hat with blue ribands, long washing-gloves which left the
elbows bare, and blue shoes tied with a bunch of ribands.
Bright, beautiful, buoyant—she was a picture in herself; and Jabez
turned from the dingy engraving to think so. She often came tripping
into the warehouse or the kitchen, and exchanged a bright word with one
or other, and away again; but Jabez had thought of her only as a pretty
playful child until that afternoon. Joshua Brookes pointing Hogarth’s
lessons had given the one spur; that lovely brown-eyed, brown-haired
maiden, with her simple, “Come, Jabez—I’m ready,” had given another.
She put her little gloved hand in his, after bidding her aunt and
cousin good-bye, and went dancing, skipping, and chattering by his side
down Oldham Street, and let him lift her over the muddy crossing to
Mosley Street, unconscious of the chimerical dreams floating through
his apprentice brain all the while. His original ambition to make a
home for Simon and Bess, where neither penury nor care should trouble
them, dwarfed before the new ideas crowding upon his mind. He had
read the sermon on the wall, but the old “Knave of Clubs,” as Joshua
was called, little thought how that pretty piquant little fairy, the
“master’s daughter,” would point it with something higher than ambition.
There were at that period in Manchester two schools for young ladies,
which, being celebrated at the time, deserve to be mentioned. The one
was situated at the extreme end of Bradshaw Street, looking through its
vista across Shudehill to the gaps in brickwork called Thomas Street
and Nicholas Croft, where in highly genteel state Mrs. (or Madame, as
she insisted on being called) Broadbent superintended the education of
a large and very select circle.
Education must have been at a low ebb when the chief manufacturers
of the town consigned their daughters to this pompous, pretentious
woman, who could not speak correctly the language she professed to
teach. In her attempt to appear the print and pattern of a lady, she
“clipped the King’s English,” and made almost as glaring errors as
Mrs. Malaprop. Yet, strange to say, she turned out first-class pupils
(for the period). The fact is, she was shrewd enough to know her own
deficiencies, and delegated her duties to others who were in all
respects efficient.