a bad example to infringe Madame Broadbent’s rules. Go, my dear, and
go cheerfully. I will send Cicily for you at noon. The streets will be
rather rough this week.”
She went, though not cheerfully, and Cicily was duly despatched to
bring her home; but neither Cicily nor Miss Ashton had returned when
dinner was put upon the table at half-past twelve o’clock. Then Mrs.
Ashton recalled her own words respecting the rough streets, and the
insult offered as unwelcome tribute to Augusta’s beauty over-night;
and, though by no means a nervous woman, the mother grew restless and
apprehensive—a lovely daughter who is an only child is so very anxious
a charge. As she sat down to her solitary meal, another thought crossed
her mind.
“James, ask Mr. Clegg to oblige me by stepping this way.”
Mr. Clegg was with her in an instant: the summons was unusual.
“Jabez, I’ll thank you to ascertain why Miss Ashton has not returned
from school at the usual time. Cicily has been gone almost an hour.
Should Madame be keeping her in for any breach of etiquette last
night, pray offer an apology for me and my daughter also, but at the
same time politely insist on Miss Ashton’s immediate return to dinner.”
“I believe I owe Madame Broadbent an apology myself,” answered Jabez,
smiling. “I shall be glad of an opportunity to discharge the debt.”
* * * * *
The school-room door was midway down the dark, narrow, arched entry.
Groups of girls, with slates and bags in their hands, loitering on the
pathway at the entrance and in the passage, made way for him, with
curious looks and whispers among themselves (Jabez was not unknown to
some of the senior pupils). The school-room door stood ajar: the whole
place was in a commotion unprecedented in that precise establishment.
Madame Broadbent, holding by the copy-slip axiom, “Familiarity breeds
contempt,” preserved her dignity and that of her high office by
avoiding personal contact with her pupils, save at stated hours. Her
assistant-governesses were at their posts from nine until twelve, from
two until four; but Madame herself only sailed into the long room from
the house-door across the entry at eleven o’clock to receive reports,
inspect work, dispense rewards, or administer reproof and chastisement.
“Spare the rod and spoil the child” had not been abolished from the
educational code fifty-five years back.
The double shock her importance had received at the theatre sent
her home to quarrel with her supper; and as a meal dispatched in an
ill-humour does not easily digest, Othello and the Castle Spectre
haunted her pillow, and broke her rest with nightmares.
She rose late, and stepped into her schoolroom later than usual, to
visit her accumulation of disagreeables on minor delinquents, as well
as on the primary offenders.
Let us be just: Madame Broadbent had gracious smiles and approving
words to dispense to the ultra-good, and their very rarity made them
valuable. But if she rewarded any that day, it was only that severity
might stand out in contrast. Little hearts beat, little fingers plied
industrious needles, little eyes bent over work, when Madame’s step
was heard in the entry; but when her august presence fairly filled the
room, every little damsel rose simultaneously, and saluted her entrance
with a low, formal, deferential curtsey.
Two rooms had evidently been thrown into one to give required space,
the back portion being curiously lit by a narrow small-paned window
extending along the side, high above the rows of racks and pegs. It was
the writing end of the room. Madame Broadbent occupied a seat in the
front portion, almost opposite to the door; and as she marched towards
it with more than ordinary loftiness, and beat her fan on her table
with one peremptory tap, instead of a short rapid quiver, to enforce
her command, “Attention, ladies!” the very youngest of those ladies
could interpret the signs portentously. Lucky was the young lady whose
work passed muster that morning; so many were condemned to stocks,
backboard, columns of spelling, recitations from the “Speaker” and
Thomson’s “Seasons,” lengths of open hem, back-stitching, or seaming!
At length Madame Broadbent, having dismissed ordinary business, rapped
her fan upon the table, and in a sharp peremptory tone called “Miss
Ashton!”—and Miss Ashton, who had been expecting the summons all
the morning, came forward at her bidding, but not with the ordinary
alacrity of pupilage. She had left her childhood (I had almost said her
girlhood) behind her, in the box-lobby of the Theatre Royal.
“Miss Brookes!” cried the same sharp voice; and with a painful start
the little girl who had committed such a terrible breach of decorum
before a whole theatre as to utter her impromptu commentary on the
tragedian’s art, rose, trembled, burst into tears, but was too agitated
to obey with sufficient promptitude. Her seat was on a low front form.
Madame took a step forward, stretched out her arm, and dragged the
child by the ear to the side of Augusta, then gave her a smart cuff as
an admonition to more prompt obedience another time.
Then with another rap of her fan on the table, which set all hearts
palpitating, she began an inflated harangue to the mite of a child and
the budding woman, in which she reproached them both with bringing
disgrace on the “Academy,” hitherto so irreproachable. The one had
drawn the attention of a whole theatre to her ill-breeding and want of
proper training; the other by “boldness of look and manner had licensed
the free speech of loose men;” and, as if that were not enough, had
“been the cause of an unpardonable insult to herself.” She, Madame
Broadbent, so highly honoured and respected by the chief people in the
town, to be called “Mother Broadbent!”—it was an outrage not to be
endured!
Her temper interrupted her oration; she shook Augusta violently, and
condemned her to remain in school until she had learned one of Mrs.
Chapone’s letters by heart. Then she darted on the smaller Miss as the
primary cause of all, shook her till the little teeth chattered, and
dragged her by the lobe of the ear towards a dark closet, set apart for
heinous offenders.
Something akin to rebellion had been growing in Augusta’s breast all
the morning. She was a girl of quick impulses and sympathies, and was
not only struck by the disproportion of punishment meted out, but by
the terror on the little one’s face. She threw herself in their path,
and to the utter astonishment alike of pupils and teachers laid hold
of the child to release her, exclaiming as she did so, “You shall not
lock her in the dark! you will kill her with fright, you cruel Madame
Broadbent!”
If Madame Broadbent had been wrathful before she was furious now. Never
in her long experience had she been so braved. Without thought, without
premeditation, she raised her heavy fan and struck sharply at Augusta.
The blow fell on her beautiful bare neck, the collar-bone snapped, as
it will do with a very slight matter, and Augusta dropped!
Cicily, waiting outside at the time, heard Madame’s raised voice and
Augusta’s impetuous remonstrance; then a thud, a fall, and a suppressed
scream from the girls; and without pausing to knock, she pushed
open the door, Cicily had been too long the recipient of Augusta’s
school-girl confidence to stand in much awe of Mrs. Broadbent at best
of times. Now she darted forward to raise her young mistress, whom
she almost worshipped, and certainly did not consult either Madame’s
feelings or dignity in the epithets she launched at her.
No one had been more electrified at the effect of that stroke with
the fan than Mrs. Broadbent’s self. She seemed petrified, and
Cicily’s indignant outburst fell on deaf ears; but as Miss Nuttall
ran for water, and Cicily cried out for a doctor, she roused to
self-consciousness, and closed the school-room door as if to keep the
outer world in ignorance of what was going on inside.
A wide latitude was then allowed for school discipline; but even Madame
Broadbent was sensible that the blow which had felled Mr. Ashton’s only
daughter was a blow to imperil her seminary.
Augusta did not revive. Miss Nuttall suggested that the school should
be dismissed, and a doctor fetched; and, before either could be
effected, Jabez was on the spot. He took in the scene at a glance;
Augusta, white as her frock, her hair all in disorder, lay extended on
a form, her head supported by the kneeling Cicily, whilst excited girls
and teachers flocked helplessly around.
“Good heavens! what is the matter? What has happened to Miss Ashton?”
was his hurried and agitated inquiry.
One said one thing, one another. Wrathful Cicily came nearest to the
mark. “That old wretch has struck ar darlin’ wi’ her great fan. Aw’m
afeared her neckbone’s brokken!”
“Impossible! She could not be so heartless!” he cried, as the group
made way for him to pass, and he knelt down opposite to the sobbing
Cicily, on the other side of the form, and sprinkled the pallid face so
dear to him with water some one had brought in.
There was no sign of revival. “My God! this is terrible! Oh, madam, how
could you do it? Mrs. Ashton will be distracted!” and he started to his
feet, inexpressible anguish in every feature. “But this is no time for
revilings. Where is the nearest doctor?”
“There is Mr. Campbell in Hanover Street—and——”
Brushing unceremoniously past his informant, he was with the Scotch
surgeon before Miss Nuttall had recovered from her surprise, or Madame
from her stupor.
Mr. Campbell was quickly on his way to attend his new patient, and
Jabez speeding towards the top of Market Street. There he hired a
Hackney coach from the stand, close as he was to home, and drove
straight to Dr. Hull’s. He bore the doctor from his unfinished dinner
with impetuosity, brooking no delay. They found Augusta Ashton faint,
pale, but restored to consciousness, in Madame’s own dingy parlour,
where the author of the mischief was doing her best to put a favourable
colour on the disaster.
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIFTH.
RETROSPECTIVE.
The collar-bone was broken; there was no mistake about that; but Jabez,
mindful of Mrs. Ashton’s protracted anxiety, lingered no longer where
he would fain have remained than to see the surgeon prepare—under Dr.
Hull’s supervision—to reduce the fracture; a delicate process, since to
the collar-bone no splints can be applied.
Augusta’s affection for her mother overcame her pain.
“You will be careful how you tell mamma, Jabez, I know; do not frighten
her more than you can help; she will be so terribly distressed,”
faintly murmured she, as he again departed.
With all his haste and care, so much time had been spent, Mrs. Ashton’s
fears had already conjured up all manner of evils, all of course wide
of the mark. That something was wrong she felt assured, and he found
her dressing to follow her dilatory messengers. The stoppage of the
coach and his evident agitation were confirmatory; but the absolute
facts roused as much indignation as grief.
Yet Mrs. Ashton never forgot herself; and though the waiting coach bore
her to Bradshaw Street, to add her maternal reproaches to the wrathful
utterances of Cicily, the rough rebukes of Dr. Hull, and the prickings
of Madame Broadbent’s own conscience, the natural dignity of her manner
more overawed and impressed the resentful schoolmistress than all which
had gone before. She was as profuse in apologies as in extenuating
pleas, but she was not prepared to combat Mrs. Ashton’s proverbial
argumentation.
“Facts are stubborn things, madam, and she who cannot govern herself is
not fit to govern others.”
Neither coach-making nor road-making had reached the acme of
perfection, and Augusta’s removal home, without the displacement of the
bone, had to be considered.
A sedan chair—the last in the town—was still kept for invalid use at
the Infirmary. Jabez was aware of this, and before Dr. Hull could make
the suggestion he had proposed to go for it, and was back with the
black, brass-nailed sedan long before the doctors thought their patient
fit to be removed.
As the unfamiliar vehicle waited at the “Academy” door, it attracted
the notice not only of neighbours and returning school-girls, but of
passers-by, until Madame Broadbent was in a fever. The reputation of
her school was at stake, and she felt that every extra moment that
hand-carriage and wheel-carriage remained standing there, the bruit of
the lamentable occurrence was spreading farther afield.
There had been no cessation of afternoon school duties, albeit the
teachers alone presided, and discipline was somewhat relaxed. But when
patient, doctors, friends, and vehicles had gone their way, and the
school was soon after dismissed, the harrassed, agitated, and prescient
disciplinarian surrendered herself to alternate fits of hysteria,
passion, lamentation, and overweening assumption.
That first outburst over, the self-important dame stood on her “right
to maintain discipline,” even when confronted by Mr. Ashton, no longer
the easy-going, pleasant parent of a paying pupil, but the angry father
of an injured only child, who had posted from Whaley-bridge, on the
first intelligence of the mischance, leaving his business incomplete.
Not alone to the inmates of the house in Mosley-street was Augusta
Ashton precious. Notwithstanding her sometime waywardness (the result
of her father’s over-indulgence), she had endeared herself, by her
affectionate heart and winsome ways, to a wide circle of friends;
even Joshua Brookes was less grim with Augusta; so no wonder Jabez
was secretly devoted to her heart and soul. Great and general was the
sympathy expressed on the occasion.
Mrs. Chadwick and Ellen were with Mrs. Ashton before the afternoon was
out, and at Augusta’s eager desire her cousin remained behind, not
only for companionship, but as chief nurse, an office for which Ellen
had that peculiar fitness observable in some women, coupled with the
deftness and experience gained in long attendance on her father.
And now, leaving Augusta in the hands of love and skill, with all that
affection and wealth can lavish upon her in furtherance of recovery,
let us step backwards to the previous September, when Peterloo was
fresh, and Jabez yet wore his left arm in a sling.
Whaley-bridge has been mentioned more than once, for in that village,
near the high road from Manchester to Buxton, Mr. Ashton possessed
a water-mill on the picturesque banks of the river Goyt, which
there divided the counties of Cheshire and Derbyshire. It had been
established in the previous century, together with another in the
contiguous vale of Taxal, by a speculative ancestor of Mrs. Ashton,
whose old hall was in the locality. The two places had been chiefly
colonised by his workpeople, many of whom had been pauper apprentices
from Manchester and Warrington.
Besides the mill, Mr. Ashton owned the “White Hart” Inn, close to the
bridge, where the Buxton coaches stopped; and Carr Cottage, a long,
low, rough-cast building, nestling under the shadow of a fine old
farm-house which crowned the elevated ridge of Yeardsley-cum-Whaley,
lang-syne the Gothic stone Hall of the warlike Yeardsleys.
From this farm-house, Carr Cottage was separated by a retired walk at
the back, which, itself a wilderness of nettles, gave access to the
cellarage and a clear well, and led the adventurer away up the hill
between the cottage grounds and the farmer’s tall high-banked hedges,
which almost overtopped the cottage roof. And on the left of the
cottage (as viewed from the high road) spread the granaries, stabling,
and farmyard, enclosed by remains of the ancient wall, and entered by
a step or two through an ancient Gothic doorway, over which ivy and
honeysuckle clambered in luxurious rivalry.
The cottage, which on each floor contained four capacious rooms in
its length, was on the ground divided in the middle by a respectable
lobby; the house-place and kitchen lying on the left, the parlours to
the right as you entered. There were two staircases, one at each end
of the building, the one running upwards in the kitchen itself, the
other from a small enclosed space at the back of a parlour, containing
also a china closet door, and lit by a low window close to the foot of
the staircase, from which it was possible to step out into the garden,
unseen by anyone in the house. Otherwise, both chambers and parlours
had doors of communication from end to end of the building, the two
middle chambers being only accessible through the others.
The lower windows in the front—at least, those of the large
parlours—were brought close to the ground, and overlooked a charming
landscape; descending, at first suddenly, from the wide-spread
flower-garden (with its one great sycamore to the right of the cottage
for shade), then with a gradual slope to a bean-field below, to a
meadow crossed by a narrow rill, then, after a wider stretch of grass,
the alder and hazel fringe of a trout-stream, skirting the high road,
on the far side of which tall poplars waved, and in Autumn shed their
leaves in the wider waters of the Goyt fresh from the bridge, where the
road bends. Rivulets, road, and river ran parallel. And from the road a
broad wooden gate gave access (over a bridge across the trout stream)
to a wide, steep avenue between trim hedges, which rose to the level of
the cottage, in itself as delightful a retreat as any wearied denizen
of town could desire. To Mr. Ashton it was necessary as an adjunct to
his factory; an occasional home for his family in the summer, a lodge
for himself when a visit of inspection was desirable.
Hearing that the general discontent was spreading amongst his own
work-people at Whaley-bridge, Mr. Ashton, without waiting for the
stage-coach, put himself into a long-skirted drab overcoat, with high
collar and small double cape, ordered reluctant James to “find another
for Clegg,” and having stowed away a carpet bag and a case of pistols,
lest they should be molested on the road, he mounted his high gig, with
Jabez by his side, and set off to “take the bull by the horns,” as Mrs.
Ashton had advised.
Away they went through the mild September air, up London road (where
houses had been growing in the years since we scanned it last) and past
Ardwick Green Pond, where a dashing young buck, booted and spurred,
lounged at the door of the quaint “George and Dragon,” and followed
them curiously with his eyes; yet not so swiftly but Jabez had time to
recognise with accelerated pulse his former assailant, Laurence.
Longsight, Burnage, Fallowfield left behind; Stockport-bridge gained,
they go walking by their horse’s head up the steep hill, between
frowning houses, to the “Pack-Horse” in the Market-place, where the
beast was baited, and the travellers dined at the same table, Jabez not
for one moment forgetting the social distance between his master and
himself.
Again seated, they quickly left the smoke-begrimed, higgledy-piggledy
mass of brick and mortar called Stockport behind, and were away on
country roads, where yellow leaves were blown into their faces, where
brown-faced, white-headed cottage children were stripping blackberries
from the wayside brambles, or ripe nuts from the luxuriant hazels which
have since changed the very name of the Bullock-Smithy through which
they drove at a gallop to Hazelgrove.
It was a glorious treat for Jabez, was that drive, and Mr. Ashton,
conversing with him as they went, was surprised to discover his love of
Nature, and his knowledge of her secrets. This induced reminiscences of
the early years of Jabez when Simon took him pick-a-back in the fields
on Sundays; and Mr. Ashton led him on to dilate on his childhood among
his first friends, until he had a closer insight into the young man’s
heart than in all the years he had served them.
But the object of their journey had not been forgotten; and at
Disley, hearing Mr. Ashton remark that they were but three miles from
Whaley-Bridge, Jabez ventured to suggest—
“Do you not think, sir, as I am unknown in Whaley-Bridge, I might make
inquiries, and ascertain the feeling of the people better if I went on
foot, having no apparent connection with you?”
“That is a wise thought of yours, young man. Just so. I will put you
down at the next milestone. Here is a guinea for your expenses at the
‘White Hart.’ But country people are inquisitive; what do you propose
to be?”
“Well, sir, I took the liberty to bring a sketch-book with me—I don’t
get many such opportunities—I could represent myself as an artist; or I
could cram my pockets with plants and roots as I went along, and say I
was a botanist in search of specimens.”
“Stick to the artist, Jabez; our country botanists would soon floor
you on their own ground—they know more of plants than pencils, I’ll
warrant.” And Mr. Ashton, handing the reins to Jabez, took a pinch of
snuff on the strength of it.
Mr. Ashton, putting up the collar of his coat, drove direct to Carr,
much to the surprise of his unprepared overlooker and wife, who had
charge of the cottage. He said nothing of any companion; and Jabez some
twenty minutes later walked into the bar of the “White Hart,” dusty and
weary, as if with long walking; called for bread-and-cheese and ale;
intimated his intention to remain the night, if he could have a bed;
talked of the scenery, and led the host to tell of the best points for
sketching.
Professing fatigue, he kept his seat in the bar-parlour the remainder
of the day. The sling, not yet wholly discarded, drew attention, as he
expected it would. The incomers, eyeing him askance, talked politics
before him, and finding him less glib than themselves, whispered that
he was a refugee from Peterloo, and, to show their sympathy with
the party to which he was supposed to belong, freely discussed the
political aspect of the district before him.
He was young, free with his money, and they were not reticent. He found
that the overlooker had made himself, and his master through himself,
obnoxious to his weavers, and that only prompt measures would prevent
an outbreak.
The next morning Mr. Ashton put his head into the inn, greeted “Mr.
Clegg” as some one he was surprised to meet in so remote a spot, and
invited him to Carr Cottage.
Jabez accepted the invitation for the afternoon, saying he could not
spare the morning. Under pretence of sketching, he took his way by the
Goyt to the neighbourhood of the mill with pencils and sketch-book:
women and children flocked inquisitively round him in their
dinner-hour, and talked to him; then he rested in weaver’s cot, and
when he found his way to Carr in the afternoon, and sat with Mr. Ashton
for privacy under the dropping keys of the sycamore, he had brought
with him the key to the prevailing discontent.
Mr. Ashton listened, took an enormous quantity of snuff, dropped an
occasional “Just so,” and, knowing the sore, set about healing it. He
drove back to Manchester, leaving Jabez as his temporary deputy—high
honour for so young a man—and the overlooker was required to render up
his accounts.
A fortnight later, as Jabez was midway up the avenue to Carr in the
afternoon, he turned, hearing the blithe bugle of the coming Buxton
coach, and watched its dashing progress along the road. To his
astonishment it stopped at the gate. He himself reached the spot at a
run.
His eyes had not played him false. Simon Clegg, in his best clothes,
was there on the box seat; Tom Hulme and Bess and little Sim sat close
behind him. Mr. Ashton was himself an inside passenger.
In the bustle and confusion of alighting, and dragging boxes from
the boot and from the top, curiosity was kept on the stretch. It was
not until the entire party were under the roof of the cottage that
Jabez was enlightened. Tom Hulme was the new overlooker, Bess the new
caretaker of Carr Cottage, which was henceforth their rural rent-free
home: and to Simon, long disqualified by rheumatism for the wet and
slush of the tannery was given the charge of the garden, with a boy
under him. And of all the group old Simon and little Sim were most
delighted.