equally lavish with both, taking as much from his father’s business and
adding as little as could well be imagined. His step on the threshold
caused Augusta to turn round, beaming and beautiful, and dart towards
him, exclaiming—
“I’m so glad you’ve come!” simultaneously with his “Clear out, Cis!”
and a warm embrace which somewhat disarranged the dainty dress. His
wife was yet a new toy, and his passion had not had time to evaporate.
She was a something to admire and exhibit for admiration as a
possession of his own; and though her love had received one or two rude
shocks, he was still a glorified being in her eyes, and she clung to
him as a true wife should cling. She was still but a girl in her teens,
proud of the admiration she excited. Disengaging herself, she cried—
“Oh, Laurence, see how you have crushed my swansdown! and now, dear,
do make haste and dress, we shall be so late,” and putting the fluffy
trimming in order, she unlocked a small jewel case on the table, and
took thence the pearls she had worn on her wedding-day.
“What will you say for these, Augusta?” cried he, dangling before her
eyes a gossamer scarf and an exquisite ivory fan, whilst his other arm
thrown over her white shoulders again threatened the elastic down.
“Oh, Laurence, you are a darling! Where did these beautiful things come
from?” and she gave him more than one kiss in payment.
“India, my love: they are ‘far-fetched and dear-bought,’ and so must
be good for you, my lady. I met your uncle Chadwick with an old
sea-captain, from whom I bought them. By the way, matrimony seems
catching. We are invited to a wedding,” and he began leisurely to
undress as he spoke.
“A wedding! Whose?”
He laughed.
“Ah, woman all over! I thought I had news for you. Guess!”
In small things as well as great it was his delight to tantalize, so he
kept her guessing whilst he proceeded with his toilet, and she began to
clasp her pearls on arms and neck, and in her pretty ears.
“Well,” said he at length, “who but your cousin Ellen!”
“Ellen?” She had gone so little near her own family that this was
indeed news for her.
“Yes; I thought she meant to die an old maid, but it seems she’s not
too proud to wear your cast-off slippers.”
“My cast-off slippers? What do you mean?” and she paused whilst
clasping her bracelet with a look of bewildered interrogation.
“Now, Augusta, pray don’t look so innocent!—Your father’s favourite
fetch-and-carry, that sneaking, canting fox, Jabez Clegg, finding that
Miss Ashton was a sour grape, has straightway gone wooing to Miss
Ashton’s cousin as fruit ripe enough and near enough to drop into his
vulpine jaws; and by G—— the girl has had no more spirit than to drop
when he shook the boughs, rather than hang on untasted!”
The speaker’s lip and nose had curled with contempt as he began, then
his nostril dilated, and he struck his wet hand on the washstand with a
force which threatened the earthenware and set it jingling.
Augusta was not yet schooled to silence; her generous spirit rose to
repel these allegations.
“Oh, Laurence, how can you? Ellen has had plenty of admirers; she has
no need to wear anyone’s cast-off shoes. And as for Mr. Clegg! He is no
cast-off slip”——she checked herself; a thousand trivial and forgotten
things flashed across her mind at once; there was no doubt that Jabez
had aspired to her own hand—he must have offered himself to Ellen in
pique, to look as if he didn’t care; she could not add the “of mine,”
which should have rounded her sentence; she substituted, with barely
a moment’s pause, “He is neither a sneak nor a cant, and if Ellen
marries him she will have a good husband;” adding, with marvellously
little tact or knowledge of her own husband, “I’m sure, Laurence,
dear, you have no right to speak ill of the man who saved your life
in the very pond that is frozen over now before our doors! And you
cannot really think him mercenary, when he refused the £500 your father
offered as a reward for his bravery.”
Not lightning was more quick and scathing than the fury which flashed
from her husband’s eyes and almost paralysed his tongue, as the last
words fell from her lips. With the damp towel in his hand he struck
across her beautiful bare shoulders with a force which traced red
lines upon their snow; then marked her round arm with a band as red by
tearing away the suspended fan and scarf, which he threw behind the
fire without one thought of either “far-fetched” or “dear-bought.”
“Soh, madam!” he hissed rather than spoke, whilst Augusta shrank from
him in affright, “soh! you dare defend the wretch who played the spy on
us at Carr—attacked me, an unarmed man, with a stick, like a coward,
and left me bleeding there for dead, hoping to win the heiress for
himself!”
From her father and Cicily both she had gathered the truth of that
night’s exploits. His misrepresentations no longer misled; but for very
fear she held her peace.
He went on—
“Madam, that night’s savage attack cancelled every debt of gratitude
I owed the calculating knave who turned his back on my father’s £500,
thinking to multiply it by thousands from _your_ father!”
“It is not true!” she dared to say, her sense of justice and her spirit
of resistance rising in defence of one she knew to be foully aspersed.
Not because he was Jabez Clegg but because he was an absentee maligned.
A shriek rang through the big house, and servants came scurrying up,
with Mr. Aspinall in their midst; and Cicily, the first to dash between
them, caught on her well-covered back the blow from the madman’s brace,
which would else have fallen afresh on the naked shoulders of his wife,
already scored by it with livid welts.
Carry away the fainting lady—soothe the infuriated savage—apply raw
beef to shoulders as red, if not as raw—let the brute steep himself
in brandy unto stupefaction. The morning will come, when the fumes
of passion and brandy will alike have passed away, and the man will
repent him of his cruelty. But the sting of groundless jealousy will
remain, and the broad livid stripes across the white shoulders. Time
and care will efface those marks, but neither kisses, nor caresses, nor
presents, nor time itself can obliterate the hieroglyphics stamped with
that buckskin brace on the young wife’s heart. He has fixed the name of
Jabez Clegg there, and in conjunction “brute” and “liar,” as equivalent
to his own.
It might have been expected after this that the Aspinalls would have
been conspicuous by their absence from the cousin’s wedding, or that
Augusta might have laid her wrongs before her mother. But, no; your
jealous man never spares himself a pang if he hopes to inflict one; and
the wilful woman who finds she has made a mistake in marriage is the
last to confess it.
Cold weather and recent indisposition served as an apology for the
violet velvet spencer which, worn above the pale lilac silk, covered
bust and neck; and it was far from unbecoming to the young matron or
the occasion.
Old Mrs. Clowes—who had kept her word anent the cake, which was a
triumph of confectionery skill—from some long-closed coffer brought
forth a stiff brocade of ancient make and texture, placed a bonnet on
her unaccustomed head, and from a far seat in the choir watched Jabez
Clegg enter with his college friend and groomsman, stalwart George
Pilkington, though she did not see them linger to read the inscription
over the grave of Joshua Brooks, or look up with grateful remembrance
to the Chetham Gallery, where they had worshipped together. But she
remembered them as boys in long blue gowns and yellow under-skirts,
and could not help contrasting the college dress of the past with the
high-collared bright blue coats, the gilt buttons, lemon-coloured
vests, light trousers, and white kid gloves, in which they found their
way to her to shake hands, whilst waiting for the trembling white-robed
bride and her friends.
And there Mrs. Clowes sat and listened to the irrevocable words which
bound Jabez to “love and cherish” the woman who loved him with her
whole soul; whilst in spite of himself his very brain was reeling with
memories of that other wedding-day, when Laurence Aspinall and Augusta
Ashton, now standing calm and beautiful in the background, had breathed
the selfsame vows before that altar; and somehow the old dame had a
secret misgiving when all was over that it was “_not_ the reet one
after all.”
“All over!” had been the cry from the heart of Jabez then. “All over!”
was the echo now, as the last “Amen” sounded, and he registered a
silent oath, not down in the rubric, to keep the troth he had plighted,
although no electric thrill answered the shy touch of Ellen’s hand, or
the dumb devotion of her glance, and although Augusta’s greeting of her
new “cousin” jarred a still sensitive nerve.
All over! so men delude themselves. “All over!” they say, when
disappointment closes the door of the past, and veils their eyes to the
vista of the future. “All over!” when the curtain falls on the prologue
of life’s drama. Yet it rises again, and they find that the play has
but just begun.
CHAPTER THE FORTY-THIRD.
PARTNERSHIP.
By dint of persuasion old Mrs. Clowes was induced to place her
well-saved brocade at the table graced by the wedding-cake she had
manufactured; though, as she afterwards said confidentially to Jabez,
“I must have had as much brass in my face as I had i’ my pocket to sit
down cheek-by-jowl wi’ grand folks with foine manners, who might come
into my shop th’ next day to be served with a pound o’ gingerbread; but
I’d not ha’ missed Mester Ashton’s toast for summat. And I don’t know
as annybody turned up a nose bout it wur that spark Aspinall, who owes
me for manny a quarter a pound of humbugs.”
Round that hospitable and substantial wedding-breakfast, which owed
much of its success to the bride’s own deft fingers, also gathered the
Cloughs, who had watched the career of the bridegroom with interest
from his cradle—Miss Clough as bridesmaid; Mr. John M‘Connel and
Henry Liverseege, who had cultivated his friendship from their first
introduction; John Walmsley and Charlotte, who privately chafed at his
reception into the family; and Augusta, whose brilliancy was somewhat
dimmed by the overt watchfulness of too courteous and attentive
Laurence; but there was no Ben Travis, and missing him, Jabez was
disposed to gravity. But though there were uncongenial elements
present, George Pilkington’s cheery voice and lively sallies sufficed
to set mirth afoot and keep her dancing; whilst Mrs. Ashton, stately
and proverbial, seemed to share some pleasant secret with which Mr.
Chadwick and her husband were on the _qui vive_.
It was the age for toasts and sentiments. Some smart and witty things
had been uttered, but not until the cake was cut and commended, and a
post-chaise at the door waited to convey the newly-married pair to Carr
Cottage and the earliest friends of the bridegroom, did Mr. Ashton
rise to his feet, snuff-box in hand, and with a merry twinkle in his
eye propose—
“Success to the new partnership!”
“Stop, my friends!” said he, as glasses were elevated in honour of
the toast; “perhaps I had better explain what is meant by the new
partnership.”
“I should think that was pretty obvious,” whispered Laurence to his
friend Walmsley across the table, but he changed his opinion presently.
“There are partnerships for life,” continued Mr. Ashton, “where
the contract is attested in church, as we have had the pleasure of
witnessing to-day, and, I am sure, with the best of wishes for its
success; and there are partnerships in business, which are usually
signed, sealed, and attested in a lawyer’s office; and it is to such a
one I now refer, in conjunction with the former.”
He paused to consult his snuff-box, and smiled to see how suddenly
inattentive heads were eagerly bent forward to listen.
“It may not be generally known that my dear _nephew_ Jabez, at the
close of his honourable apprenticeship, declined an eligible offer from
brother Chadwick, in order to remain with us.”
(Walmsley and Aspinall exchanged glances. Mrs. Clowes looked knowing.)
“It may not be generally known that he has a small amount of capital
invested in our concern at present.”
(“Small enough, I should say,” muttered Laurence.)
“Now, there being no likelihood that his son Richard will ever leave
his ship for a warehouse, Mr. Chadwick proposed to take his son-in-law
Jabez into equal partnership, considering his integrity, his business
tact, and energy to be equivalent to capital.”
“Hear! hear!” in which Mr. Chadwick’s stumbling tongue was loudest, and
“Success to the new partnership!”
(The snuff-box closed, the bandana was disposed of, the speaker’s
beaming face was all in a glow.)
“Stop! stop, gentlemen! not so fast. You will have to fill your glasses
afresh. We have not yet got to the new partnership.”
(“What the d—— l is he driving at?” was Aspinall’s polite query to
Walmsley, who shook his head in token of ignorance.)
“Brother Chadwick had concluded that Mr. Clegg was wholly without
capital, whereas he happens to have more than a thousand pounds at his
disposal.”
(Broadcloth made sudden acquaintance with chairbacks. George Pilkington
grasped his friend’s hand; there was a puckering of Mrs. Clowes’s
wrinkles; there were lowering brows from Laurence and John.)
“And Mr. Clegg being perfectly satisfied with his present investment,
and anxious to join the gingham manufacturer without quitting the
small-ware manufacturer, proposed”—pinch of snuff—“that the _two
concerns should be amalgamated_, and he have a share. Gentlemen and
ladies, the proposal was hailed as an inspiration; and as soon as
the change can be legally effected, the firm will be gazetted as
‘Ashton, Chadwick, and Clegg!’ And now let us drink—‘Success to the new
partnerships, matrimonial and commercial!’”
Aspinall’s voice alone remained silent amongst the enthusiastic cheers
with which the toast was drunk. Ellen, with humid eyes, escaped to
change her garments, and Augusta also rose; but as she passed the new
Manchester Man, around whom friends crowded with congratulations, she
put out her hand with a smile, and said, “Cousin Jabez, I wish success
to both your partnerships with all my heart.”
Laurence was at her elbow, apparently to lead her with courteous
ceremony from the room, and whilst offering one hand with a graceful
inclination of his head, he contrived with the other to pinch the upper
part of her arm, and to whisper in her ear, between his set teeth—
“D—— n you, madam! You shall smart for this!”
An irrepressible ejaculation of pain burst from her. More than one
turned round. There was real concern on the brow of Jabez as he asked—
“What is the matter, Mrs. Aspinall? Are you hurt?”
She made light of it.
“Oh, nothing, nothing. I struck my foot against a chair—that was all.”
But Jabez saw the white, frightened face, and felt there was something
more; and that scared look haunted him for many a day.
Laurence attended his wife to the staircase, smiling blandly whilst
within sight or ear-shot. Ere he left her at the stair-foot he gripped
her tiny hand till her jewelled rings cut the flesh; and the smile
became satanic as he whispered—
“You are discreet, madam. I charge you to remain so—for your life!”
Once in Ellen’s crowded bedchamber she became hysterical, to her
cousin’s great grief. But she overmastered her emotion by a violent
effort, excused it on the plea of recent indisposition, and was
consoled by her mother and other sagacious matrons with the remark that
such affections might be expected. The newly-married pair were whirled
away down Oldham Street and up Piccadilly; old Mrs. Clowes took her
departure, and then Augusta, acting on Mrs. Clough’s advice, lay on the
drawing-room sofa to rest.
Not until night did the guests depart, Mr. Liverseege being the
first to retire. There was a late dinner at six o’clock, and when
the gentlemen rose from their post-prandial wine, and sought the
drawing-room, all considerably elevated, Laurence Aspinall was too
intoxicated to move. The Aspinall carriage had been waiting an hour.
The coachman and Bob the groom grew anxious and impatient about the
horses.
“Mr. Laurence drunk? Eh! that matters nowt!” exclaimed the latter.
“Steve an’ me’ll manage him.” And taking the limp young Hercules
between them, they somehow hauled him to the carriage, and ensconced
him in one corner, with his head drooping on his breast.
Augusta shrank from joining him, afraid lest he should awake to
malicious consciousness on the road.
“Oh! I dare not go home with him! Indeed, I dare not go home with him!”
“My dear,” said her mother gravely, “I am afraid you _must_. A wife
cannot absent herself from home because her lord and master indulges in
too much wine, even though he may occasionally make a beast of himself.
It is too late to think of this _now_. What cannot be cured must be
endured. As you made your own bed, you will have to lie on it to the
end. Those who leave the spring for the stream must expect muddy water.
However, there is nothing so bad but it might be worse. Once is not
always, and love overlooks lapses.”
Augusta’s persistence that she dared not be “shut up with him alone,”
caused Mrs. Ashton to say—
“Well, my daughter, the occasion has been so unusual that even your own
father has taken more wine than his wont, or he might bear you company.
That groom seems a steady man; suppose he rides inside to support his
master; and whatever you do, remember when wine is in wit is out,
silence is a wife’s safeguard, and you will have to make the best of a
bad bargain.”
A month back Augusta would have tossed her head, and laughed lightly
at her mother’s pet philosophy. That night she rode home from Jabez
Clegg’s wedding feast with a groom and a drunken man, pondering whether
spirited resentment or tame submission was her best course. The morning
dawned on a wife pinched black and blue, with hardly strength or spirit
to sob.
Then followed a reaction, and a period of remorseful uxorious
penitence, during which Laurence submitted with a tolerable grace to
a lecture from Mr. Aspinall, who saw that something was amiss; and
chivalrous gallantry towards woman being part of this gentleman’s
creed, he did not spare his son.
Nor did Laurence spare himself. He knelt at his wife’s feet, called her
“an angel,” and himself “a savage,” implored her forgiveness, excused
his jealousy on the ground of passionate love, lavished his means on
extravagant gifts for her, and exhausted language in fair promises. But
so proud was he of his wife’s beauty, that he must needs exhibit at
theatre and assembly the jewel he had won; whilst the admiration she
excited set his jealous brain on fire, and she paid the penalty in the
silence of night, or even in the close carriage driving home.
But his contrition and the old plea of “excessive love” for his jealous
infirmity won her over, and not even Cicily more than suspected half
his cruelty.
* * * * *
Great preparations had been made at Whaley-Bridge for the reception
of Mr. and Mrs. Clegg; the factory windows were extra burnished; the
landlord of the White Hart hoisted a flag; the mill-hands lined the
road to greet them; the avenue gate was thrown open that the chaise
might drive on to the cottage; somebody had put Crazy Joe into a new
suit of clothes for the occasion, and he stood by the side of little
Sim on the step of the Gothic arch (the greater child of the twain)
to laugh and chuckle a welcome, as sincere in its way as the homely
greetings of the orphan’s fosterers.
It was a fine stalwart young man, of open but grave countenance, around
whom Bess threw her motherly arms, while Tom Hulme helped the bride to
alight, and marshalled the way for the pair, who followed arm-in-arm
into the house-place, where Simon, stiff with age and rheumatism, kept
possession of the padded chair set apart for the sick or aged.
In some way the knowledge that Mr. Clegg came as a master, and not as a
servant, had preceded him.
“Eh, Jabez, lad,” exclaimed Simon, tears of joy coursing down his
cheeks, “that aw should ever live to see this day! Would annyone ha’
thowt as th’ little lass ’at played wi’ ar Jabez an’ his toys, an’
kissed him when he wur a babby, would come to wed him when he wur a
mon—an’ a gentlemon into th’ bargain! an’ neaw let thi wife goo an’
tak’ oft her pelisse while thah talks to me; hoo’ll be tired wi’ th’
lung journey, aw reckon. Theere’s a fire i’ th’ best parlour, that’s
th’ place fur gentlefolk, an’ yo’r supper’s laid theer.”
Old Simon naturally concluded that young lovers wanted no society but
each other. On five-year-old Sim such a consciousness had not yet
dawned, and so he penetrated into the “best parlour,” and, much to the
relief of the bridegroom, broke into that first domestic _tête-à-tête_
to exhibit some wonderful pictures he had drawn with red ruddle picked
from the gravel-path.
They had been at Carr Cottage little more than ten days or a fortnight,
the first week being wet; Jabez, without neglecting Ellen, busied
himself with contemplated changes and improvements at the mill, and
thus the great bane of the modern honeymoon was avoided. The occupation
thus found for the mind and hand of Jabez at that particular epoch of
his life was a blessing for which Ellen had need to be thankful in
after years, if she had but known it.
As it was, she did fancy he might have given her a _little_ more of his
time, and not have needed her suggestion to revisit Taxal and the spot
where he had wooed her for another, and not for himself. Yet a very
slight hint was sufficient, and, taking advantage of a clear, dry day,
the two re-trod the old path by the Goyt, which awoke reminiscences
that could but be flattering to that self-love of which every human
being has a share.
Sitting down as man and wife on the lightning-scathed tree-trunk, which
had never been removed, he remembered the confession wrung from her
agony on that very spot; his arm stole round her waist in the pitiful
compassion it evoked. A new emotion stirred within his breast. He
folded his wife in his arms, and pressed upon her answering lips his
first spontaneous kiss of dawning affection.
Half-way home they were met by Crazy Joe, who had been sent to seek
them. A consecutive message was beyond his grasp. All they could make
out was, “Back! Sharp! Quick!” And, hastening on in alarm, they at
length discerned Mr. Ashton at the gate, on the look-out. His pleasant
nod was reassuring.
“My dear,” he cried to Ellen, as they advanced, “Dick has got his
promotion at last; Lieutenant Chadwick has been duly gazetted. Here is
his letter to your mother, dated from Mal—— Stop, my dear!”—Ellen had
put out her hand for the thick, heavy missive—“A communication which
called your old uncle Ashton out of his way to act as courier is not to
be dealt with lightly. And before it is read I must know whether you
would rather be Mrs. Clegg or Mrs. Travis?”
Closer she clung to the arm of Jabez.
“Oh, uncle! How can you ask?”
There was a sly gleam in the corner of his eye.
“Ah! just so. That’s it. How _can_ I ask?”
But his face sobered. He handed the letter to his new nephew.
“Jabez, I think you had better carry it to your own room for private
perusal. I will communicate its contents to all whom it may concern
besides.”
Jabez had deep feelings, though he was not demonstrative, and long
before he had mastered its contents he was thankful for the delicacy
which had spared him an open display of irrepressible emotion.
The writer, who was stationed at Malta, after dwelling on his own
promotion, and answering sundry maternal questions relative to himself,
went on to say—
“And so our Nell’s going to be married. Well, it’s about time—she’ll be
twenty-six next April, or I’ve lost my reckoning.
“And so she was fretting herself to fiddle-strings for a fellow younger
than herself, and without a shilling or a name, when she might have
had a finer fellow, with name and shiners to boot. Bravo! Nell, for
choosing a brave lad instead of a money-bag! She’s the sister for a
sailor, whatever Charlotte may think.
“But your story of the flood and the cradle, and your mention of Mr.
Travis, coming both together, recall a story I had forgotten, which may
perhaps furnish a name for Nell’s hero of the Irk and Peterloo.