closed against Mr. Laurence Aspinall, and James was incorruptible.
But the teaching of Miss Bohanna’s library being that Love was
far-seeing and parents were blind, it followed that Miss Augusta
(who would have resented any supposition of wilful disobedience or
intentional disrespect towards the good father and mother she loved
so dearly) met the fascinating gentleman (always by chance) either at
her cousin’s in Marsden Square or in her walks abroad, and scented
billet-doux came and went between the leaves of four-volumed romances,
which Cicily carried to and from the library. One of these fell into
Mrs. Ashton’s hands, when finding her advice contemned, she took
measures to check this premature and clandestine love-making, as she
thought, effectually.
CHAPTER THE THIRTY-FIFTH.
AT CARR COTTAGE.
Tom Hulme was most anxious to get back to Whaley-Bridge and the mill,
and motherly Bess was equally uneasy to return to her poor little Sim,
afraid lest he should tax his grandfather’s strength over-much, or
meet with some fresh accident. Yet more than a week elapsed before her
husband was fit to travel, and in the interim Mr. Ashton had himself
gone thither to ascertain how the new substitute filled the post.
He was still at Carr Cottage when the “Lord Nelson” stopped at the end
of the avenue, and Jabez, with fragile Sim mounted on his shoulder,
trotted down to the gate to welcome Bess and her invalid home. They had
travelled inside, but John Loudon Mac-Adam had not yet been appointed
“Surveyor of Roads,” and Tom Hulme had suffered severely from the
jolting of the coach.
Bess clasped her child tenderly, and held him up for his father’s
kiss; but she put him down to walk on before them (he could not run),
whilst she and Jabez helped the injured corporal to ascend the steep
incline. Old Simon, who seemed to have got a new lease of life from the
invigorating country air and occupation, had already breakfasted, and
was in the bean-field gathering the first ripe pods for a dinner of
beans and bacon.
“Eh, Tum, lad!” said he, as he entered the house-place, and saw his
son-in-law’s pale face against the blue-and-white check cover of the
arm-chair, “whoi, thi feace is as whoite as a clout! Tha’ll noan be
fit to wark fur one whoile. Thah’s nobbut fit fur t’ sit under th’
sycymoore tree, an’ look at th’ fleawers, an’ watch me put th’ garden
i’ fettle.”
“Just so,” said Mr. Ashton, bringing his pleasant face in at the door;
“I think Mr. Clegg will have to do duty for you a while longer. And
don’t distress yourself about it, Mr. Hulme, for I fancy a little fresh
air will do _him_ no harm this hot weather; he has been overworking
lately, and does not look too brisk.”
“You are very kind, sir,” responded Jabez, “but I trust a few days’
rest will set Mr. Hulme on his feet again.” He said nothing of himself.
But Tom Hulme had received unsuspected internal injuries, and many
weeks went by before he was stout as before—weeks pregnant with fate
for Jabez; and not Jabez alone.
Factory hours were long, but the Summer days were longer, and he was
glad after work was over to ramble away through the valley of the Goyt,
following the winding of the stream, or over the larch-clad hills
above Taxal, whence he would return with the rising moon, bringing
pockets full of the crisp-brown fir-cones for Sim to play with. In the
pine-woods, alone with nature, he could give vent to his emotions, or
indulge in meditation at his will.
Mr. Ashton, however, found him other occupation for his spare hours.
The landlord of the “White Hart,” bearing in mind that Mr. Clegg had
come under his roof first as a travelling artist, had expatiated to Mr.
Ashton with much pathos on the deplorable condition of the inn sign,
not without sundry broad hints that Mr. Clegg’s temporary residence on
the spot was a glorious opportunity not to be neglected. Mr. Ashton had
smiled, said “Just so,” taking a pinch from the immense snuff-box lying
on the bar-parlour chimney-piece, then fallen back upon his own, gone
away, and forgot the dingy sign altogether, until another hint from his
tenant refreshed his memory.
As he stood at the inn door waiting for the Manchester coach, an upward
sly glance of the jolly host’s caused him to say to the young man by
his side, “Do you think you could manage to paint a new sign for the
‘White Hart,’ to oblige Chapman and me?”
Jabez hesitated, not from unwillingness.
“I’m afraid, sir, to attempt. It’s not in my line, and——”
“Oh! you can do it well enough. Remember the banner.”
“I’ve no materials here, sir, else——”
“If that is all, you shall have them in a day or two.”
In a few days an easel, a new sign-board, and colours were sent by the
Manchester and Buxton carrier, and Jabez set to work, to the especial
wonder and admiration of little Sim, who delighted to stand by his
side, and grew rebellious when “bed-time” was announced. Jabez was,
however, but an untaught artist, and his painting hours were few;
the _couchant_ hart was rubbed in and wiped out over and over again
before he was satisfied even with the outline; but then it grew in fair
proportion under his brush, until he felt there was something in him
beyond the region of tapes and braces.
The graceful animal, resplendent in golden collar and chain, looked
mildly out from the easel in the parlour nearest to the passage (used,
when the family was there, as an eating-room), and little Sim gravely
reported to his elders it only wanted “gass, an’ tee, an’ ky,” when
the inmates of Carr Cottage were startled by the arrival of unexpected
visitors.
It was the second week in August; the air was heavy with the perfume of
clove carnations, honeysuckle, mignonette, lavender, musk, and mint.
Golden sunflower and crimson hollyhock were in their glory; bees and
wasps hovered over balsams and china asters, or hid themselves in the
blue Canterbury bells or the amber nectary of the stately white lily.
Fruits were ripe for the gatherer, grain was falling under the sickle.
Bess, in a fair white muslin cap, a large check apron over her dark
chocolate-and-white-print gown (her blue bed-gown days were over), was
moving quietly about the house-place, preparing their early breakfast,
no longer restricted to oatmeal porridge.
Tom, looking worn, but clean and neat as loving hands could make him,
leaned back in his soft arm-chair, and watched her with well-satisfied
eyes. Little Sim was already in the garden with his grandfather,
helping to gather raspberries and currants for preserving.
The tall oak-cased clock struck seven, and then, true to time, the
guard’s bugle announced the coming of the coach from Manchester.
Instinctively Bess went to the door, as was her wont, when the coach
came in. She uttered an exclamation of surprise.
“Eh, Tum! aw declare t’ coach is stoppin’ at ar gate. Happen theer’s a
parcel or summat for ar Jabez.”
And off she set past the kitchen window and the farm-yard Gothic
doorway, and down the avenue, with the light foot of a younger woman.
Before she reached the avenue gate, the stuffy vehicle had yielded
up three ladies and two bandboxes, and the guard having unlocked the
capacious boot (a kind of closet at the back), dragged thence, with
much superfluous puffing and straining, two hair trunks of moderate
dimensions. Yes, there stood Mrs. Ashton, grandly calm; bright-haired
Augusta, tall, slim, and, it must be added, unamiably silent; and Ellen
Chadwick, whose black eyes had an absolute glow of expectancy in their
depths. Bess put up her hand in amazement.
“Eh, Mrs. Ashton, madam! yo’ han takken us unawares! an’ theere is na a
bit o’ flesh meat i’ th’ heause; an’ th’ butcher’s cart wunna be reawnd
agen till Setterday! But awm downreet glad to see yo’ an’ th’ young
ladies” (she dropped a respectful curtsey), “an’ a’ lookin’ so weel. Aw
wur afeard yo’ wur no’ comin’ this Summer.”
“Never mind the butcher’s meat, Mrs. Hulme; having come to Carr we must
do as Carr does; I do not doubt we shall fare very well,” said the
stately lady, reassuringly. “I trust we shall find your good husband
free from pain, and Mr. Clegg and your family in health.”
Bess thanked Mrs. Ashton for her kind inquiries, but somehow she
boggled over the “Mr. Clegg.” She was proud enough of his advancement,
but to her he was still “Jabez;” and he did not seek to be otherwise.
There was a difficulty about the luggage, no men being about. By this
time old Simon was nearly down the hill, little Sim following at his
heels, his face, hands, and pinafore stained with fruit.
“I run for Joe,” cried crippled Sim, as Bess tried the weight of a
trunk, and Ellen interposed. Run indeed! It was the very travestie of a
run!
“Well, yo’ see as heaw o’ Moore’s folk are eawt i’ th’ fields cuttin’
whoats [oats]. Feyther an’ me con carry one on em atween us. They’re
noän so heavy.”
Mrs. Ashton would not hear of it. Just then little Sim came back
with Joe—his most particular friend, to whom he was chief patron—a
drivelling idiot, a man in frame, a child in heart and brain. He was a
pitiable object, the scoff of the rabble, but he had sense enough to
know his protectors. At the instance of the four-years-old child, he
shouldered the box with a vacant chuckle; and Sim, loaded with an oval
pasteboard bandbox half as big as himself, waddled after him as fast as
his deformity would permit.
Before the travellers could reach the top of the avenue Jabez Clegg
was with them, the other trunk upon his shoulder. He had heard at the
“White Hart” of their arrival, and had almost sacrificed the dignity of
his position in _his_ desire to run.
There were more greetings, accompanied by a cordial shaking of hands;
and Bess and Simon looked on with pleasure, not unmixed with pain, that
the foundling they had adopted and reared had mounted far above their
heads, albeit in rising he had drawn them up too.
He breakfasted not with them in the house-place, but with the
new-comers in the parlour; and Bess herself waited upon them, Meg, her
little maid, being off in the harvest field gleaning for a bed-ridden
mother.
She heard him conversing freely, if deferentially, with the lofty Mrs.
Ashton on topics and in a language her provincial tongue could never
compass. She saw him turn to answer the arch sallies of Miss Ashton,
and the quieter observations of Miss Chadwick, and noted that the dark
eyes of the latter kindled when he spoke, and her cheeks had a warmer
glow, as if they caught their hue from the flushed face of Jabez.
Breakfast over—little Sim had sat on the door-step to share his with
Crazy Joe,—whilst Ellen and Augusta retired to unpack. Mrs. Ashton
graciously accepted the escort of Mr. Clegg to the mill, and they trod
the avenue and the high-road side by side, discussing business matters,
her dignity losing no whit by the companionship. Mrs. Ashton was one of
those who can lift up without stooping.
Clouds never lingered on Augusta’s face; she had been transported
thither, as she said, “with no more ceremony than a bale of twist,” but
she put off her displeasure with her travelling bonnet, and danced into
the kitchen airily as a sylph, to help Bess out of the quandary caused
by their advent.
“I am afraid our arrival has been very inauspicious,” Augusta said,
“but I can assure you I was not consulted, and am not to blame” (she
had certainly not been consulted—blame was another matter). “And now
what can I do for you, Mrs. Hulme?”
Augusta tucked up the sleeves of her peach-coloured gingham dress,
borrowed a linen apron from Bess, who confessed to being “rayther a
heavy hond at paste,” and soon the matron was at ease respecting pies,
and tarts, and custards. Simon Clegg brought in a dish of trout fresh
from the stream; the larder supplied savoury ham and eggs, the garden
furnished peas; so Mrs. Ashton was not far wrong.
It was but a spurt on Augusta’s part; her tender impressionable heart
had melted at Mrs. Hulme’s first look of dismay, but, the impulse over,
there was no more tucking up of sleeves or handling of paste pins.
Fortunately for their digestion, Ellen Chadwick had no less skill,
since, quiet as she was, she seemed to lack an outlet for superabundant
energy, and, obtrusively restless, helped Bess she hardly knew how, or
how much.
Augusta wandered about cottage and garden, or sat for hours under the
shade of the great sycamore tree, singing low-voiced plaintive ditties;
feeling herself the most ill-used and wretched being in existence,
separated from her adorable lover; and the more she brooded, the more
discontented and melancholy she became. It was all very real and very
much to be deplored. No knife cuts so keenly at the heart-strings as
the sharp edge of a first love turned in upon itself; and Augusta was
as much in love as ever was maiden of seventeen.
Mrs. Ashton went daily to the mill, but a casual remark of Mrs.
Hulme’s on “Miss Ashton’s mopin’ an’ malancholy” aroused the attention
of the energetic mother, and she did her best to counteract morbid
fancies with long sharp walks in the early morning (extending, on one
occasion, as far as Shawcross Hall, where she astonished her relatives
by an informal visit), and a repetition of the dose in the evening,
when Mr. Clegg made one of the party, thus unconsciously adding fuel
to the fires which, unknown to her, consumed alike her niece and her
warehouseman.
At the end of ten days, Mrs. Ashton returned to Manchester, leaving the
girls behind. She had extorted a promise from Augusta that she would
not write to Mr. Laurence Aspinall, and relied on that promise being
faithfully kept. Moreover, after some debate with herself, as they
walked from the mill together on the last afternoon of her stay, she
committed her daughter and niece to Jabez Clegg’s care.
“You are a very young man for so important a charge,” she said, “but
you are steady as old Time, and of your integrity and fidelity we have
had many proofs. Miss Ashton’s health demands a prolonged stay on this
breezy hill-side, but I fear she feels it dull after Manchester. If you
will endeavour to amuse her when you see her drooping, I shall consider
myself your debtor, sir; and should anything _unusual_ attract your
notice, I depend on your calling our attention to it.”
“I feel honoured by the trust you repose in me, madam,” replied he, a
grave consciousness of his own danger stirring at his heart; “you may
depend on my watchfulness over Miss Ashton and her cousin.”
But of any danger to Miss Ashton beyond that arising from a
sensitively delicate frame, which might need the sudden summons of Dr.
Hull to allay the fears of parents anxious for their only child, he
had no suspicion or perception. He had no more clue to Mrs. Ashton’s
hidden meaning than she to his secret emotions. It had been wiser to
have been more explicit. Without that charge he might have made it a
point of honour, if not of duty, to hold aloof from the young ladies
lest he should be obtrusive: as it was, the more he pondered, the more
he became satisfied that it was only a delicate way of giving sanction
to a companionship he might otherwise have regarded as presumptuous.
Accordingly, he constituted himself their cavalier after business
hours, fulfilling to the letter his instructions to endeavour to amuse
Augusta whenever he found her drooping, well rewarded if he could win
back a smile or a peal of the rippling laughter he had heard so oft in
her school-girl days. His attentions to Miss Chadwick were tinctured
with the profoundest respect, but there was no effort to entertain or
be agreeable; on the contrary, it was Miss Chadwick who kept the light
shafts of her cousin’s wit within bounds when they were likely to
wound—as they did sometimes.
The White Hart, to Sim’s disquiet, would have suffered long from dearth
of herbage, had not thunderous clouds emptied their reservoirs amongst
the hills, until brooks became rivers, and roads almost impassable.
Then Jabez resumed his brush, Sim clapped his thin little hands
with delight, whilst the sedate young lady of twenty-four, and the
bewitching damsel of sweet seventeen, varied the monotony of piano,
book, or embroidery-frame, with an occasional criticism of his work.
It was a time fraught with intoxicating delight, but of terrible
temptation to Jabez. The frequent fits of langour which bowed Augusta
down like a drooping lily, made her only more dangerously dear to him,
and it needed all his strength to remember that she was his master’s
daughter, and confided to his care. If he now thought of Laurence
Aspinall and his fascination, it was only as a butterfly beau, for whom
no sensible maiden could entertain a permanent liking. Not even when,
turning back one forenoon for something in the closet which he had
forgotten, he found her in tears on the low ledge of the open window at
the foot of the staircase.
“Good heaven, Miss Ashton, what is the matter? Are you ill? Is anything
troubling you?”
“Nothing,” sobbed she, the clear drops falling faster.
“Nothing! oh, Miss Ashton, this cannot be for nothing,” and he sat down
on the window-ledge beside her, not daring so much as to touch her
hand, his own were in such a quiver.
“Miss Ashton—Augusta—you told me your troubles when you were a
school-girl, am I less worthy your confidence now? Can I do anything
to serve you? I would lay my life down to save you from pain;” and the
earnest tenderness of his voice spoke volumes.
She had subdued her emotion. Gathering herself up with a reflex of her
mother’s stateliness, she said haughtily, “It is nothing, sir, I am
better,” and swept past him up the staircase, leaving him to set his
teeth and turn away with clenched hands, alike exasperated at his own
loss of self-command and grieved for her grief.
On the narrow landing which ran parallel with the staircase like a
balcony, Augusta found her cousin Ellen, with one hand on her side,
leaning against the chamber door-post, as if for support, with closed
eyes and pale lips. She had been “overcome by the heat”—so she said.
CHAPTER THE THIRTY-SIXTH.
THE LOVERs’ WALK.
Jabez held a responsible post, and had no more leisure than other
business men for emotional indulgence. He hurried out of the cottage,
and down the avenue, shutting up his bitter feelings within the doors
of his heart as he went. But the process closed his eyes and ears to
external sounds, and the old postman, with his long tin horn, which
had been echoing through the straggling village a full quarter of an
hour, passed him in the avenue and said, “Good-day,” without so much as
arresting his attention.
At the mill he found letters waiting—one, which had been post-paid as a
double letter, conspicuous amongst the wafered business communications,
not only because of its thick, gilt-edged paper, and crimson disk of
crested wax, but from its curious folding, as if to baffle prying eyes.
It was signed “Ben Travis,” and was so long, it went into a pantaloon
pocket, to be read when his multifarious duties allowed him more
leisure.
When the hands were dismissed at noon, and the one clerk had left
the counting-house, he took out the voluminous epistle, which was
dated September 10th, and certainly found therein matter of interest.
Amongst a few preliminary items of news, he learned that the excesses
of the Coronation night had created so much disgust in the minds of
thinking men that many of those who had denounced Henry Hunt’s advocacy
of abstinence, and at the public expense had formerly disseminated
printed laudations of good brown ale, the “old English beverage,” as “a
cheering and strengthening drink,” no longer branded the water-drinkers
as “enemies to the corporeal constitution of Englishmen,” but had given
their countenance to social gatherings whence intoxicating liquors were
excluded. Travis himself was doing what he could to promote these
temperate meetings, and looked for the earnest co-operation of Mr.
Clegg on his return to Manchester. (And he did not look in vain; though
neither of the young social reformers saw in advance how universal
would become the temperance movement of which this was the unpretending
precursor).
The letter went on to say—
“Miss Chadwick and her fair cousin were spirited away mysteriously. At
first I blamed myself as the unhappy cause. I have since discovered
my mistake, through a quarrel between Mr. Walmsley and Mr. Laurence
Aspinall, when both were slaves to Bacchus—_In vino veritas!_ I suppose
you know that Mr. Aspinall the elder is a martyr to the gout, and has
been driven by his enemy to the Buxton baths. The cause, I have heard,
was a gentlemanly debauch in a fit of passion or wounded pride. His son
joins him to-day. I scarcely think he will call on your young ladies
after what has occurred.”
“What has occurred?” repeated Jabez, “what can he mean by that? I wish
correspondents would be more explicit!”
He pondered over this sentence, but could make nothing of it, and after
reading a little way, came to the real object of the letter, prefaced
as it was with much circumlocution.
“It may seem strange that a great, big, burly fellow like myself should
be such a booby as to seek the intervention of a third person in an
affair of the heart. Yet, if I have any insight into your nature, I
think I may confide in you, and depend on your good offices. After so
many months’ dangling and craven hesitation, I summoned up courage to
make my pretensions known to Miss Chadwick. I know I did it clumsily
and ungracefully; the very strength of my passion fettered my tongue.
I shall never forget the pitiful look of the sweet girl as she burst
into tears, assured me of her esteem, but declined my suit. Her tears
unnerved me, and I had not power to plead my own cause. Do not despise
me, Clegg; neither Samson nor Hercules was any stronger. I cannot
resign myself to that verdict. I would throw myself again at Ellen’s
feet, and beseech her pity, but that I dread its repetition. Can I
count on your good offices to move her in my behalf? I know the value
Miss Chadwick sets on your opinion, and how highly she esteems you, or
I should not think of asking this. The trust I repose in you is the
best proof I can give of friendship. Do not hesitate to tell me the
worst. I trust I am brave enough to bear my fate—when I know it. Mrs.
Chadwick does not believe her daughter’s decision final.”
This was a disquieting letter. Mr. Travis had been his firm, true
friend, in spite of difference in position and fortune. He had
overlooked that difference from the first, but would Miss Chadwick, his
employer’s niece, overlook it, if he stepped beyond privileged bounds?
From the depths of his own conscious heart he felt for his friend, but
how to approach so delicate a subject to serve him was perplexing. He
never thought of shirking the trust.
It was late when he got home to dinner. Ellen and Bess were both on
the look-out for him. He quickened his pace, fearing some evil to his
beloved Augusta, whom he had last seen in tears.
“What an anomaly is woman!” he thought, as he found her fingers
rattling over the keys of her piano in accompaniment to the merriest
ditty he had heard from her lips since she was a child.
There was a strange sparkle in her eyes, a vivacity in her manner so
opposed to her sadness that he asked himself if he had been dreaming
before, or was dreaming then. She blushed over her willow-pattern plate
as she took her seat, but, after that first token of susceptibility,
chatted with a volubility unusual to her, and curiously in
contradiction to the silence and reserve of Ellen Chadwick. In the
morning he had debated whether that secret trouble came within the
category of “unusual” things Mrs. Ashton required to be informed of,
and, behold! it was gone!
She rallied both Jabez and Ellen on their gravity, and at length, as
if on a sudden inspiration, asked, playing with her green-handled,
two-pronged fork—
“Shall you be very busy at the mill this afternoon, Mr. Clegg?”
It was an unusual question. He answered—
“Rather. Some bales of twist have come in from Messrs. Evans, of
Darley-Abbey Mills. I must see them unpacked, and compare the twist
with samples. But—your motive for asking?”
“Oh, if you are busy—— Well, perhaps after tea will be better; it will
be cooler. I wish you would just take Ellen a good long walk; I found
her fainting with the heat this morning.”
Ellen coloured vividly.