CHAPTER THE FORTIETH.WITH ALL HIS FAULTS.
AUGUSTA’S penitence exhaled like dew from a flower. In the light of her mother’s lofty displeasure her tears dried, and self-will once more exerted its pre-eminence. She locked herself in her own room and resolutely refused to come forth.
“So long as that odious meddler, Jabez Clegg, remains under our roof, I will stay here; and, if you will not consent to my marriage with Laurence Aspinall, I will starve myself to death!” was her angry declaration, as she closed the door and turned the key.
“Leave her alone,” said Mrs. Ashton, “she will want her food before the food wants her; and a little wholesome solitude is good for reflection. She will change her mind before the day closes.”
This was at mid-day; but night came, and another noon, yet there was no sign of Miss Ashton’s appearance; and Mrs. Ashton had made no overtures to her refractory daughter. The tender-hearted father was in a pitiable state of perturbation. In and out the warehouse he was twenty times in the day—as Kezia observed, “For a’ th’ world like a hen on a hot griddle;” and his snuff-box was hardly ever out of his hand. Business seemed altogether beyond his grasp; he answered questions at random, or was unconscious when addressed.
To this state of trouble Jabez unintentionally contributed his quota. Over the tea-table, unenlivened by Augusta’s sparkling presence, though she was the one sole topic of conversation—he said, and not without an effort—
“It has occurred to me, and I have thought the matter well over, that since my unfortunate position in relation to late events has made my very presence obnoxious to Miss Ashton, it might be better for all concerned if I were to shiftmy quarters without delay. There are lodgings vacant close at hand; and I have no right to linger here and disturb the peace of any one member of your kind family.”
“Jabez Clegg!” remonstrated Mr. Ashton, with wide-open eyes.
“Have you anyotherreason to be dissatisfied with present arrangements?” asked Mrs. Ashton stiffly.
“Oh! Mrs. Ashton, how can I have? This house has been my home for years, and such a home as rarely falls to the lot of the fatherless. To you, my benefactors, I owe everything—almost myself; and I should ill repay your uniform kindness by remaining to create discord.”
“If your only desire to remove is to gratify Miss Ashton’s whims, you will oblige me, Mr. Clegg, by remaining,” replied Mrs. Ashton, with grave decision; whilst Mr. Ashton, looking the very picture of consternation, laid his hand upon the young man’s sleeve, and said slowly—
“My lad, you have been one of the household for many years; do not be the first to make a breach in the family. If the child of our blood and our affections goes forth to strangers wilfully, and repudiates us, do not let the son of our adoption leave us to lament her loss in solitude.”
This was strong language, but Mrs. Ashton did not gainsay it, and Mr. Clegg could not longer press the point though his own pain was intensified by the fear of adding to the distress of Augusta, who, he was confident, regarded him as an interloper and a mischief-maker.
Little had been seen of Ellen since the return from Carr Cottage. A message despatched by Mrs. Ashton to her sister, in her dilemma, was answered by another to pray them to “excuse Miss Chadwick, who was not well enough to go out.”
This somewhat disconcerted Mrs. Ashton, who, more alarmed than she would admit, and disturbed by the restless uneasiness of her husband, had looked for Ellen to act as a mediator without any compromise of her own dignity.
At the close of the second day, as Augusta pertinaciously refused to open the door, at the instance of Jabez the lock was forced; and even then a barrier of chairs and boxes had to be thrust back by sheer strength. She was exhausted from want of food, but her will was indomitable, and neither her father’s entreaties, nor her mother’s commands could induce her to partake of the viands spread before her.
Jabez was in agony. Delicacy and her obvious dislike hadkept him from intruding upon her privacy, but as hour after hour was added to the night, and Augusta persistently dashed aside the food placed to her lips, he joined his prayers to those of her father; and neither availing, rushed out of the house, and in less than a quarter of an hour returned with Dr. Hull.Hewas not a man to stand any nonsense.
“Here, sir”—to Jabez—“you are young and strong, hold the silly child’s arms whilst her teeth are forced apart. If she will not take food, she shall take physic, and see which she likes the best.”
But the struggle to nourish her frame through set teeth was prolonged and painful, and the parents were likely to yield before the child.
Servants may be faithful, but they have eyes and ears, and not always discreet tongues. Family matters discussed freely in the kitchen before apprentices, found their way into the warehouse and beyond it, and Mrs. Ashton’s nerves tingled when she became acquainted with the rumours afloat.
From Tim, the Ashton stable-boy, Aspinall’s emissary (Bob the groom, once more in his old service) had no difficulty in obtaining all the information his young master needed.
Laurence waylaid Mr. Ashton, inquired anxiously after the obstinate girl’s health, and, having paved the way by as much contrition as he thought necessary, called at the house the following morning, in company with his father, to renew proposals for Miss Ashton’s hand.
Worn out by Augusta’s obstinacy, which she and Laurence agreed to call “constancy,” father and mother were in a different frame of mind to receive this proposition than when they had given their former peremptory rejection. They were not one whit more convinced by Mr. Laurence’s assurance that he meant to “reform,” or Mr. Aspinall’s quotation of the adage, “A reformed rake makes the best husband”; but rather than see their child starve herself to death before their very eyes, they yielded; and Laurence Aspinall, profuse alike in thanks and professions, was permitted by aching hearts and reluctant lips to introduce Augusta to his father then and there as his bride elect.
It was a moment of triumph for Laurence when Augusta refused to come down without an assurance under his own hand. He pencilled on a card, “My Augusta, I wait for you,—Laurence.” And presently, supported by a maid-servant, she entered the room, her dress of purple poplin serving to showhow wan and transparent her fair skin had grown, how unnatural was the brilliance of her eyes.
She would have fallen, as much from weakness as emotion, on her entrance into the parlour, but that Laurence darted forward and caught her in an embrace which brought back somewhat of her lost colour; and if anything could have softened the pain of that hour to her parents, it was the apparent ardour and sincerity of the lover, the hope that a genuine passion might tend to wean him from his old habits and associates.
Mr. Aspinall’s reception of Augusta was characteristic.
“My charming Miss Ashton, I see my son has brought back the roses to your cheeks. May they never fade again, but bloom perennially without a thorn! I rejoice to kiss your hand paternally on this auspicious occasion, and to assure you that I shall be proud to welcome such beauty and such constancy as the wife of my noble son.”
Consent once obtained, the Aspinalls were as eager to press forward the marriage as the Ashtons were to retard it, neither her father nor mother affecting a satisfaction they did not feel.
“My dear,” said the latter to Augusta one day, when her eyes were sparkling over a costly present just received from Laurence, “your father was in hopes you would have fixed your heart on some good steady man like Jabez Clegg, who would have been a comfort and a credit to all of us, and have kept the business in the family after we were in our graves.”
“Pshaw, mamma! how preposterous! I am surprised at my father’s infatuation for that young man. I esteem him quite sufficiently for a friend, but”—and she locked an emerald earring in her delicate ear—“I could not exist with a husband whose heart was in his business. My husband’s heart must hold me and me only; and I must have something to look at as well as to love.”
“Ah! Augusta, it must be a very small heart indeed which cannot find room both for a wife and a business to maintain her fittingly. The sheen of a dress which must last a life is of less consequence than its durable texture.”
“Well, mamma, so long as the material pleases my eyes, I will take the wear upon trust. And do not be surprised thatyourdaughter prefers a fine man and a gentleman to one whose fortune is in the clouds, and whose origin is so obscure, he has noteven a nameto call his own.”
She was standing to admire herself and her new jewellery inthe Venetian glass between the windows as she said this, and her mother’s figure filling in the frame, Jabez Clegg came and went unseen, a pang in his heart and an intensified resolve to make both fortune and name for himself even though his master’s daughter vanished from his vision.
Nothing would induce Mr. Ashton to part with his child until she was at least eighteen; and in that particular he was proof against the importunities of Laurence and the cajoleries of Augusta. So for ten months (during which the lawyers had ample time to quarrel over the settlement of Augusta’s £18,000, so that too much or too little should not be tied down on the lady) the dashing young blade was on his trial, so to speak, and contrived to beguile both father and mother of their prejudices; whilst to Augusta a new world of gaiety was opened out.
As her daughter’s chaperon, Mrs. Ashton renewed her acquaintance with the yellow satin cushions of the Assembly Rooms, the Gentlemen’s Concerts discoursed sweet music in their ears, Miss Ashton could take her seat in the boxes of the Theatre Royal without fear of Madame Broadbent’s fan, and Kezia was in her glory, so many balls and parties had to be catered for; and Mr. Laurence Aspinall was in the ascendant.
All this was inexpressibly painful to Jabez, but as he had written to Ben Travis that “there was something more for men to do than die of disappointment or blighted love,” so he set his face like a rock against the breakers, and gave himself entirely to business. He said to himself it would be cowardice to flee from that which must be borne and mastered, so never another word was heard of his seeking a home elsewhere. If he was brave, he was not foolhardy enough to court pain in the sight of his rival’s triumph, and though in his determination to “stick to his last,” he had eschewed all art which came not within the scope of pattern designing, to that he turned with redoubled assiduity after business hours, having found a profitable market apart from Mr. Ashton’s firm, as his account with the Savings Bank in Cross Street had borne witness from the date of its establishment in January, 1818.
But for a brief space, and that whilst the wound was raw and new, his ministrations to the dying chaplain of the Old Church not only carried him out of sight and hearing, but in a measure drew his thoughts away from his own sorrow.
Once only did Joshua scarify the sore. In an interval of pain he said with his customary abruptness,
“And so that pretty lass of thy master’s is going to throw herself away on the wild rascal who pitched thee over the wall?”
Jabez could not trust himself to answer save by a movement of his head.
“Ugh! she’d better ha’ takken a fancy to thee!”
Half-an-hour or more elapsed. Waking from a doze, he said—
“Dost thou remember my telling thee to look at ‘Hogarth’s Apprentice’ in Chadwick’s parlour?”
“Indeed, I do! They have influenced my life,” answered Mr. Clegg with a sigh, pouring out a dose of medicine as he spoke.
“More physic, eh? Ugh! doctors kill more than they cure with their stuff! Ay, lad, thah’st mounted up, thou’lt be a master thyself some day, if thou dost not forget thatJabezmust be anhonourableman!”
“I never did forget it sir, even though the apprentice boy was mad enough to aspire to his master’s daughter! But losing her, I have learned a new lesson. The prayer of the olden Jabez, which has been mine night and morn from boyhood, was a prayer forself, andselfonly, and I had no right to look for an answer to all the hopes I based upon it. If I have not been ‘kept from evil,’ and ithas‘grieved me,’ I prayed for myselfalone, and in grief I have my answer. Prayer should take a wider range.”
“Right, lad, right! now let me sleep.”
When he waked again he remarked—
“It’s time for thee to be off, Jabez; but time is running faster with me than thee, lad. Here, reach yon Terence from the bureau. It is the Edinburgh edition. Keep it for the sake of the rough old Parson who gave thee thy name. And take care of it. Good night. How thick the fog is!” He had lost the sight of one eye, and the other was rapidly going.
That was the ninth of November. When Jabez came again on the eleventh, the fog had cleared away from Joshua Brookes’s sight for ever; and fountains of tears ran freely from many eyes for the hot, hasty, single-minded, and learned Parson whose name was a household word in the town, and who had ever been a kind friend to Jabez. In his life he had been at war with huckster-women, street-urchins, school-boys, and his ecclesiastical brethren. In his death the wide parish, and morethan the parish, united to reverence his memory, those who had laughed loudest at his eccentricities being foremost to bewail him.
Even the November clouds hung thick and heavy as a pall over the Old Church and churchyard, crowded with mourners, when his silent remains were carried to their bed in the cross aisles his feet had trodden so many active years, and if others besides Jabez shed tears over the open and honoured grave, there was many an old creature mourning in solitude, besides the queer old woman in kerchief and mutch, who sat amongst her sweets in a closed shop, and lamented that so young a man as Parson Brookes should be carried off before her.
“Well-a-day! and only sixty-seven! He’ll want no more humbugs, and no more cakes for his pigeons. Poor Jotty!”
There was no mention of Jabez in his will, but when the young man took the old worn Terence sadly and reverently down from the shelf where he had first placed it, on turning over its leaves he found a bank note for £300 pinned to the fly-leaf, on which was inscribed his own name and that of the eccentric donor.