sanctuary of his own sitting-room, seen him dash himself down into a
chair, and bury his head in his hands on the table with unutterable
anguish on his face, and heard burst from his lips—more as a groan than
embodied thought—“Oh, Augusta, adored Augusta, what a presumptuous
madman I have been!”—they would but have had half the answer. But had
they mounted the polished oaken stairs to the dainty chamber where
Augusta Ashton lay in bed with a “cruel headache,” brought on by
the fright, and eyes red with weeping at the catastrophe which had
befallen her adorable admirer, the gallant lieutenant, and heard her
half-audible lamentations, the answer might have been complete.
Mrs. Ashton had heard Augusta’s frantic appeal to Jabez at at the
pond, had seen him stagger and turn livid as if shot, noted the inward
struggle ere he said, “I will;” but she had ascribed it to old and
unforgiven injuries, and thinking it hard that he should be called upon
to hazard his life for his known enemy with chances so heavy against
him, had herself forbidden the attempt. This was all the solution she
had to offer Mr. Aspinall. In the excitement of the accident and the
rescue, she had overlooked Augusta’s excessive emotion, but now her
mother’s heart took alarm. Could it be that the younger eyes of Jabez
had seen a preference for the handsome scapegrace which she had not?
The matter was talked over by husband and wife long after Mr. Aspinall
had left; and the anxious mother questioned the maiden in the privacy
of her own room, to come thence with the sad conviction that Augusta
had prematurely been led captive by a handsome face and a dashing
air, irrespective of worth or worthlessness. Yet she consoled herself
and Mr. Ashton with the reflection. “It is, after all, only a girlish
fancy, and will die out.”
“Just so, and as the young rake is laid by the leg for one while, there
is all the more chance,” assented Mr. Ashton.
“If his immersion does not convert him into a hero,” added the matron,
with a clearer knowledge of her daughter. Yet neither asked themselves
how the intuitive perception of Jabez came to be more acute than their
own, nor what power impelled him to risk his life for an enemy at the
mere bidding of Augusta. Indeed, they set the hazardous exploit down to
the score of magnanimity and bravery only.
Equally unobservant were they of Ellen Chadwick’s remonstrance, or her
feverish watch of every perilous turn Jabez and Nelson had taken on
the ice, or of the caresses she lavished on the dog when all was over.
Only Mrs. Chadwick had seen that, as she had seen fainter signs years
before; but she held her peace, and, having a leaven of her sister’s
pride, “hoped she was mistaken.”
There were three young hearts consumed by the same passion—that which
lies at the root of the happiness or misery of the world,—one nursing
the romance, two fighting against its hopelessness in silence and
concealment; but “the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle
to the strong.”
Jabez Clegg could not tell when he had not loved Augusta Ashton, from
the time when she was young enough to play about the ware-rooms, or
to be lifted across the muddy roadways in his strong apprentice arms,
when it was his pleasant duty to protect her to and from school. But
he could trace back the time when Hogarth’s prints gave to that love
a definite shape, and he began to look upon his master’s daughter as
a prize to be attained. All things had tended to confirm his belief
in its possibility, and love and ambition had gone hand in hand,
and fed each other. The child had come to him for companionship and
entertainment, the girl under his protection had confided to him her
school-day troubles, and come to him for help in difficulties, with
lessons on slate or book. She had looked up to him, trusted him, clung
to him; and though she was as a star in his firmament, he had had a
sort of vague impression that the star which shone upon him from afar
would draw nearer, and, as he rose to it, come down to meet him.
His first sharp awakening was her reminder that the pair of intoxicated
officers who had insulted her in the theatre were “gentlemen,” and so
not to be chastised by _him_. His second—and then jealousy added a
sting—was meeting Aspinall face to face in the hall, when the latter
smilingly bowed himself out on his first visit. And now he brooded in
despair over the final dissipation of his dream beneath the icicle-hung
boughs on Ardwick Green; for the first time conscious that she belonged
to another sphere.
Never by look or word had he done himself, or her, or her parents, the
dishonour of giving expression to his ambitious love; and now another
had looked on his divinity, and won her for himself. It came upon him
like a flash when that white-faced agony, that piteous cry, called
him to imperil his own life—worthless in the scale against another,
and _that_ other. It came upon him with a flash that scathed like
lightning. He had forgiven the boy Aspinall long ago; and the man—well,
Augusta’s happiness demanded the sacrifice, and he had made it. Out of
his very love for Augusta he had saved the rival’s life she had prayed
for. And he had been offered _money_ for the act which wrecked his own
life. Thank God he had rejected it with scorn!
A kind hand laid on his shoulder interrupted a reverie which had
induced torpor.
“Mr. Clegg, you are ill—your cold requires attention. You had better
seek repose: you are quite feverish.”
Repose! The man’s soul was on fire, as well as his body. Yet from his
chamber a fortnight later emerged a grave business man, without an
apparent thought beyond the warehouse.
And what of Laurence Aspinall, whom we left with closed eyes, wrapped
in blankets, on a sofa? He had hung suspended in the water for an
hour by the clock in the tower of St. Thomas’ ivy-clad church; and
notwithstanding he had kept his limbs and the water in motion so long
as he had power, the chill had extended upwards, and though life had
been called back, sight and reason were in abeyance.
Shorn of his rich curls, for weeks he raved and struggled in the grasp
of brain fever; and old Kitty, forgetting everything but her promise to
his dead mother, watched and tended him night and day, albeit nurses
from the Fever-Ward relieved each other in their well-paid care of him.
The frost was gone; vegetation, bound so long, had leapt upwards from
its chains. Lilacs and May-buds greeted him with perfume through
the open windows, and even the daffodil and narcissus sent up their
incense from the brim of the garden-pond when he began to show signs of
amendment.
“Better,” “Much better,” were the answers to inquirers (among whom may
be cited Kit Townley, and Bob, their sometime groom); but the lilac and
the hawthorn ripened and faded, and the daffodils gave place to the
wallflower and carnation, and the rosebuds opened their ripe lips to
June, yet the rich cotton merchant’s son saw nothing of the glow.
Over the blue eyes of Laurence the lids were closed, and not an oculist
in the town had skill to open them. Dr. Hull, the consulting physician
of the Eye Institution, and his surgical colleagues, Messrs. Wilson and
Travers, had laid their heads together over a case peculiar in all its
bearings, but the lids remained obstinately shut.
At length, when Hope had folded her drooping wings in despair, and
Mr. Aspinall was borne down with grief for his sightless son, someone
suggested that, as water had done the mischief, water in action might
cure it.
“Can he swim?” asked rough Dr. Hull curtly of Kitty.
“Swim? ay, he can do owt he shouldna do,” replied the old woman, having
no faith in the value of her charge’s peculiar accomplishments.
“Is he a good swimmer?”
“Aw reckon so! He usent to swim fur wagers i’ Ardy (Ardwick) Green Pond
when he wur quoite a little chap.”
“That will do.”
Mr. Aspinall was conferred with, and the next day’s mail coach took the
blind patient, his father, Kitty, and one of the surgeons to Liverpool.
After a night’s rest at the York Hotel, they were driven down to St.
George’s Pier, a very humble presentment of what it is in this our day.
Like Manchester, Liverpool has vastly swelled in size and importance
within the last fifty years, and her docks have grown with the shipping
needing shelter. The Mersey was not the crowded highway it is now—there
were fewer ships and _no_ steamers to cross each other’s track, and set
the waters in commotion, defying wind and tide.
Mr. Aspinall had engaged a boat to be in readiness. The sightless
athlete was rowed a short distance from curious spectators on the pier,
and then, his face being turned towards Birkenhead, he plunged into the
swelling river, which he breasted like a Triton, so welcome and native
seemed the element to him. And as the salt wave buoyed him up, or
dashed over his cropped head, he appeared to gain fresh strength with
every stroke.
Anxiously his three attendants followed in his wake, lest cramp should
seize him, or his impaired strength give out before the river—there
rather more than a mile in breadth—could be crossed. Yet not a yard of
the distance bated he.
By instruction he had bent his course slightly down stream, so as to
meet the opposing tide, then rolling in with a freshet. He struck out
boldly, the very dash of the salt waves invigorating him as they broke
over his bare poll, or laved his naked limbs. Still well in advance
of the boat, he seemed at last to cross the current as a conqueror.
He touched the shore at Rockferry, and—miracle of miracles!—his eyes
were opened. Laurence Aspinall, who for weeks had cursed his darkened
existence, could once more see!
CHAPTER THE THIRTY-FIRST.[21]
CORONATION-DAY.
Misfortune binds closer than prosperity. The calamity which tied
Laurence Aspinall down in a strait-waistcoat to a bed of fever, with
shaven head and sightless eyes, touched the Ashtons in a tender point.
Themselves the parents of an only child, the very crown and glory of
their lives, their sympathies went forth to Mr. Aspinall, in spite
of his haughty assumption. Indeed, distress brought him down to the
common level of humanity; and having neither sister, aunt, nor cousin
to undertake the care of his sick son for love, and not for fee, he
learned the comparative powerlessness of wealth, and hailed with all
the gratitude in his nature the occasional visits of Mrs. Ashton, in
whose stately bearing, no doubt, he recognised a sort of kinship.
It was, however, not Mrs. Ashton the business woman, not Mrs. Ashton
the lofty lady, but Mrs. Ashton the mother who laid her cool hand
on the young man’s fevered forehead, questioned the nurses, made
suggestions for the benefit of the invalid, and by means of a “Ladies’
Free Registry” in Chapel Walk, found a staid woman of experience to act
as housekeeper, and bring the disorganised household into order without
treading on the toes of attached but incapable Kitty.
The head of Antinous shorn of its glorious locks, swathed in
lotion-cloths, tossing in delirium, would scarcely appear so attractive
as to fill the most timid mother with fears for a romantic daughter’s
heart, and so whilst sympathy was awake vigilance slumbered. Yet never
need vigilance have been more awake. She saw him as he was—Augusta,
as he had been. Through other channels than the maternal she heard of
his condition from day to day, and how in his delirium he had mixed
up her name with the slang of the cock-pit, the race-course, and the
prize-ring; but with strange infatuation she ignored all that should
have warned, and clung to all that was pleasant to her own self-love.
Never had she been so assiduous in her visits to her aunt Chadwick and
her cousin Walmsley; and her smiling “I’ve brought my work and come
to sit with you this afternoon,” should have been translated, “I hope
John or Mr. Travis will drop in. They are sure to have something to say
about Mr. Laurence; it is so dreadful not to know how he is going on.”
And pretty generally her calculations were correct; the two gentlemen
were interested in Aspinall as a member of their yeomanry corps, apart
from private friendship, and were constant in their inquiries, even
finding their way to his bed-side; and Mr. Benjamin Travis, who could
not very well every day manage to meet Mr. Chadwick accidentally on his
way from the warehouse, and lend his stout arm as a support, appeared
only too glad to be the bearer of bulletins from Ardwick, as an excuse
for calling in Oldham Street and hovering about the chair or the window
where Ellen Chadwick sat at her sewing or knitting, and grew silent on
his entrance, blushing when she heard his footstep or his voice in the
hall, from motives sadly misinterpreted.
There was no mistaking the true purport of his frequent visits and
assiduous attention to the crippled old gentleman; so Augusta having
settled in her own mind that Ellen was either too reserved or too shy
to give her big, good-natured but timid lover proper encouragement,
took upon herself to play into his hands and make opportunities for his
wooing.
“What a delightful afternoon for a walk!” Whether he or she made
the observation, the other was sure to assent; and then wilful Miss
Augusta, unaccustomed to be gainsaid, and seconded by her aunt, also a
secret ally of Ben Travis, would drag her cousin forth in defiance of
any excuse or protestation, to the undisguised satisfaction of their
magnificent cavalier.
It was remarkable that on these occasions, whether they took their way
up Ancoats, or Dale Street, or Piccadilly, or Garret Road, they would
eventually be led so near to Ardwick Green that it would have been
unkind had not Mr. Travis “just stepped across to see how Mr. Laurence
progressed.”
And so, too, whenever she went abroad with Cicily at her heels, or when
Cicily was sent on errand, nothing would content her imperative young
mistress but that she should hasten (whether in her way or out of it),
with “_Mrs._ Ashton’s compliments,” to ascertain the condition of the
invalid scapegrace.
Many a scolding did breathless Cicily get in consequence from angry
Kezia, the queen of the kitchen, which Augusta paid her messenger for
with coins, or ribbons, or kerchiefs, or smooth words, as might be most
convenient at the time. And Mrs. Ashton was accredited by the Aspinalls
with a degree of attention never contemplated by herself.
But there was one person in the house Augusta avoided from that
afternoon at the end of March, when her fascinating hero would have
lost his life but for a much humbler hero, of less pretension and
fewer attractions. She might have been blind as father and mother to
his attachment until that afternoon; but that one wild, impassioned,
agonised look of Jabez into her eyes had opened them for ever, she felt
she had tasked him beyond human endurance, and was ashamed to look him
in the face.
The presumption of the ex-apprentice paled before his devotion and
self-abnegation, but, self-conscious, after that first outburst of
thanks on the Green, she had shrunk from meeting him in hall or
staircase, and had always a reason ready why he should not be invited
to their own tea-table when father or mother proposed it.
Public events march on irrespective of private joys or sorrows, and
no individual goes out into the world after three months’ seclusion
to find things just as he left them. The first use Laurence Aspinall
made of his eyes was to look at himself in a mirror; the second on his
return to Manchester, to select a substitute for the clustering curls
of which he had been despoiled. Closely shut in the carriage which Mr.
Ashton lightly designated a box, he was driven down Market Street,
to discover that the Spirit of Improvement, “fell bane of all that’s
picturesque,” had touched the ancient, many-gabled, black-and-white
houses with which his earliest recollections were associated, and
they were crumbling into dusty ruins before the potent incantation
“Space.” It was the beginning of a very necessary widening of the main
thoroughfares of the growing commercial metropolis; but the blanks in
the narrow street took Laurence by surprise.
There was a newspaper the more for his restored sight to scan, albeit
the _Manchester Guardian_, which Jeremiah Garnett and John Edward
Taylor first gave to the world on the fifth of May, was scarcely likely
to take his view of party politics, or of his share in the Peterloo
massacre, which was still a disturbing element in the town. Just now
the paper, which he found at the perruquier’s, was given over to the
discussion of the approaching coronation of George IV., which likewise
formed the theme of conversation, not only at the wig-maker’s, but
whithersoever he turned when once more presentable.
Somehow, though he found his way to the warehouse, and the cockpit,
and the Assembly Billiard Club, and to Tib Street, where Bob the
groom had a pretty daughter very much at the young man’s disposal,
he did not present himself at his Mosley Street friend’s as soon as
might have been expected, considering all things; and Augusta, in
the most becoming of morning robes, watching with eager expectation
for his coming, began to pant and chill with the sickness of hope
deferred. He was by no means the only admirer of the lovely heiress,
and was sufficiently desirous to complete his conquest before other
competitors were fairly in the field; but he was in perplexity how to
deal with Jabez Clegg, who stood in his way after another sort. He
was grateful—after a fashion—for the preservation of his life; but
_ungrateful_, inasmuch as Jabez was the preserver.
“Hang it!” said he, in conference with himself, as he tied on a
neck-cloth at the glass, “if the fellow had but taken the five hundred
pounds, there’d have been an end of it; and one could have wiped one’s
hands of him. What right had the beggarly charity-boy to refuse a
reward, as if he were a gentleman, I should like to know? I wonder what
Kit Townley and Walmsley were about—the cowardly ninnies—to let an
upstart like that pull me out of the hole. I’d almost as lief have been
drowned.”
And away went a spoiled cravat across the room in his temper; and he
rummaged for a fresh one, to the detriment of linen, as he went on—
“There’s one thing, I must either bring down my pride or give up the
girl, and be d—— d to it! That old Ashton, with his ‘Just so!’ like
a cuckoo, would certainly shut the door in my face if I neglected to
make a set speech, and thank his precious _protege_, who knocks you
down with one hand and picks you up with the other. Well, I don’t feel
inclined to surrender the finest girl in Lancashire, and with such
a fortune as she’ll have, so I’m in for it. I must make a virtue of
necessity. Egad! I’ll write to this Mr. Clegg. No, I won’t. It would be
a feather in his cap to have a thanksgiving letter of mine to exhibit.”
Having at length determined his course, Mr. Laurence betook himself
to Mosley Street, made his bow duly and gracefully to Mrs. Ashton and
the young lady, keeping the hand of the latter as long within his own
as etiquette would permit, and sending the warm blood mantling to her
cheek, with a supplicating glance of devotion as potent as words.
Then, with some little prolixity, he professed his desire to “thank
his noble preserver” for the life he had saved; and at his request Mr.
Clegg (whom he might just as well have thanked in the warehouse without
ceremony) was sent for. Coming into the parlour all unwittingly as he
did, to find Laurence Aspinall, handsome as ever, and more interesting
from illness, standing under the lacquered-serpent chandelier in close
proximity to Augusta, sparkling with animation, and blushing like the
rose he had just offered her with a pretty simile, his emotions so
overmastered him that the polished gentleman had him at a disadvantage,
and shone in comparison.
Both Augusta and her mother noted the contrast between the elegant
manner, suave tones, and rounded periods of Laurence Aspinall’s
thanks and the curt disclaimer of Jabez, though their deductions were
different. Augusta was in raptures with the rose-giver.
“Ah! my dear, all is not gold that glitters. There is more sterling
metal in your father’s salesman, mark my words, than in the tinselled
lieutenant,” was the summing-up of the elder, as she replaced cake and
wine in side-board and cellaret. She was clearly no friend to Aspinall
now that he had recovered sense and sight.
The town, which had been strong and outspoken in its condemnation of
the new king during the trial of Queen Caroline, was now all alive with
preparations to celebrate his coronation with befitting magnificence,
one branch of trade vying with another which should make the greatest
display in the coming procession to the Green, the like of which never
had been, and never would be again. And this competition, productive of
marvellous results, due, in a great measure, to trade rivalry and an
ambitious desire to outshine, was set down by historians, rightly or
wrongly, as a proof of the excessive loyalty of the Mancestrians.
In all classes, from the highest to the lowest, something was being
done, and nothing was talked of, thought of, dreamed of, but the
coronation and the procession. In courts, and alleys there were making,
and mending, and washing, and no little pinching was undergone by
hard-working fathers and mothers to provide the girls with white
cambric frocks, tippets, and net caps, or the lads with fresh jackets
and breeches and shoes, so as not to disgrace the Sunday-schools under
whose banners they were to walk.
The finest horses of the Old Quay Company and Pickford’s were put into
new harness and the finest condition, and every lurry (a long, flat,
sideless waggon) was called into requisition. Smiths, saddlers, sign
and scene painters, were at work day and night for weeks; and such was
the request for banners that ladies undertook the work when skilled
labour was not to be found.
The important ceremony was fixed for the 19th of July. On the 17th a
deputation of small-ware weavers waited on Mr. Ashton in despair. They
could get neither flag nor banner; the painter had thrown over the
order at the last moment.
“An’ Tummy Worthington’s getten a foine un, measter. It’ll be a sheame
an’ a disgrace to us o’ if we let Worthington’s cut us eawt.”
[The said Worthington was a rival small-ware manufacturer].
Mr. Ashton had recourse to his snuff-box, and then to his wife.
“My dear, what is to be done? There will be no flag. The painters
cannot execute the jobs in hand. Worthington’s have a fine one I hear.”
“No flag! That will never do. We must have a flag. Let me consider.”
Ellen Chadwick was busy helping Augusta to make favours for the men.
She looked up.
“Do you not think Mr. Clegg could paint you one?” she suggested.
Mr. Ashton brightened, but his “Just so!” was nipped in the bud by the
recollection that there was no time.
“Where there’s a will there’s a way,” said Mrs. Ashton, and sought out
Jabez.
“It is quite out of my line, but I can try. It would be a pity to
disappoint the men,” answered he.
“And nothing beats trying but doing!” added Mrs. Ashton.
Silk and colours were procured. There was no leisure for complex design
or elaboration. At that time the dark blue covers of the Dutch tapes in
gross bore the symbolic device of the flax plant within a rude scroll.
This Jabez transferred in colours to his silk on a colossal scale, both
sides bearing the same emblem of their trade, more effective on its
completion than any elaborate work. He had bargained to be left without
interruption. The men fidgeted about the warehouse in a state of
nervous trepidation (it was an important matter to them), but at dawn
on the 19th it was finished, and borne off by the weavers in triumph
and exultation.
Market Street Lane being in ruins at one end, and a narrow gully at
the other, Mosley Street became the natural course for the procession
(two miles and a half in length) from Peter’s Field to the Green,
where a royal salute was to be fired; and like every other house on
the line of route, Mr. Ashton’s was filled with guests, and from
garret to basement every window had its streamer, and was crowded with
gaily-dressed spectators, mostly feminine, the gentlemen of the town
taking part in the procession, officially or otherwise. The Chadwicks
and Mrs. Walmsley were there of course, and Mrs. Clough amongst others;
and on another floor Jabez—who being above the warehousemen, and not a
master, did not walk—had as a companion good Bess Hulme, who with her
husband had come over from Whaley-Bridge, where there was, of course, a
holiday. To Tom had been assigned the honour of chief standard bearer.