CHAPTER THE FORTY-FIFTH.WOUNDS INFLICTED AND ENDURED.
THE spark lies cold in the flint until it is struck; and Ellen had not believed her quiet husband capable of so much passionate indignation as burst from him on the receipt (at Sheffield) of the details just given.
“Brute! ruffian!” burst from his lips, as the letter he had crushed in his grasp fell to the floor; and with a stamp he rose to his feet, pressed one hand across his knitted brows, and paced the dingy carpet from end to end in a state of restless perturbation, his wrath finding vent in epithets and invectives foreign to his tongue.
“Whatever is the matter, Jabez, love?” Ellen asked in amazement.
“Oh, Ellen, dear! that brute Aspinall——” He could get no further. Feeling choked his utterance.
She picked up the crumpled letter, and with almost equal exasperation and pain made herself mistress of its contents, in her womanly indignation and love for her cousin losing sight of her husband’s excessive emotion.
Jabez left his journey unfinished, and drove back home with all speed. Ellen shared with Mrs. Ashton and her own mother the anxious watch in that large dim room, where the favourite of the family tossed her head from side to side, and muttered incoherent words.
In the sudden emergency, Bob the old groom’s recommendation of his own daughter as a wet-nurse for the poor frail baby passed without cavil. Not until long afterwards was it known that Sarah Mostyn was the last woman to have entered that house, and on such a footing.
One month, two months wore out before Augusta rallied, and Mr. Windsor, whose medical creed was to “let nature take its course,” pronounced her out of danger, and fit for the removalcontemplated by her friends, and resisted by Laurence. Double doors, however, could not exclude outer sounds, and so long as she shrank and shuddered at every crunch on the gravel, every echo of his raised voice, recovery was retarded. So the elder Mr. Aspinall, exasperated with his son, and most solicitous for the welfare of his son’s charming wife, added his dictum to that of the doctor, offered his own carriage for her conveyance, and threatened to disinherit Laurence if he interfered.
Once in her childhood’s home she amended rapidly, but with increasing strength came maternal yearnings for her infant, still in charge of the wet nurse at Fallowfield. A hackney-coach was sent to bring Sarah Mostyn with the child to its mother; but not a step would the nurse budge. She had no orders from her master, and the master paid her wages, and she, “shouldna tak’ orders from annybody else.” Messages were sent, and notes were written to Laurence, which he tore to shreds; but he kept away from his wife, and kept back the child.
At length she pined so much for her “dear babe,” that Mr. Ashton and Jabez together sought Laurence out in one of his haunts (a tavern near Cockpit Hill), to prevail on him to let Augusta have her boy with her.
“Mrs. Aspinall herself deserted her child,” he replied, all the more haughtily that Jabez was Mr. Ashton’s seconder. “When Mrs. Aspinall thinks fit to return home to her maternal and wifely duties, she will find the nursery door open, and her son in trustworthy care. A true wife’s place is by her husband’s hearth.”
“Yes, sir, when the husband is a true man,” replied Jabez, with decision.
“And who dares to say I am not a true man?” retorted Laurence boldly.
“I do!” promptly answered the other. “No true man would have imperilled his wife’s life by a reckless drive in the dark night in a tandem Tilbury! Only a reckless madman or a ruffian would have forced a horse into a wife’s sick-chamber, to drive her delirious with terror!”
“And pray, sir,” haughtily responded the other, “how long has Mrs. Aspinall madeyouher confidant?”
“I have not the honour of Mrs. Aspinall’s confidence,” answered Jabez sturdily, looking him full in the face; “such facts are trumpet-tongued.”
“Just so,” put in Mr. Ashton, drawing his arm through that of his junior partner. “And the fact that Augusta shrinks at your name has spoken so loudly to us that if ever she sits on your hearth again it won’t be with my consent.—Come away, Clegg.”
After this declaration, Aspinall changed his tactics. He wrote to his wife, requesting her return; then entreating it; and finally went in person to beseech her to “come back,” vowing to “atone for the past with the devotion of a life.”
The young mother yearned for her babe, the tender-hearted wife could not resist the appeal of the husband whom with all his faults she yet loved; and, regardless of the previsions of her mother, or the entreaties of her father, she allowed him to drive her home again to the Grange.
Her first thought was the nursery. There she found, in addition to her own boy, drawing its sustenance from the nurse’s breast, a well-dressed child, some two years old, playing with a wooden milkmaid-rattle on the rug. Something in the child’s face and auburn curls made her ask, “Sarah, whose child is that?”
“Mine. Whose should it be?” was the pert answer; and the boldness of the woman’s manner checked further inquiry. But Augusta’s heart had received a shock which shook the pedestal on which her idol sat enthroned.
For a short pace Laurence kept terms with his wife; and before her father or strangers he was her most devoted slave; but she underwent a species of slow torture in secret.
She soon found that Sarah Mostyn was mistress of the house as well as of the nursery, and that Sarah Mostyn’s child was of as much importance as her own baby-boy.
Then he filled the Grange with his riotous associates, and compelled his wife to do the honours of his table, though their oaths and conversation overpowered her with disgust. And if one flushed with wine, or more bold than the rest, paid her a compliment, or looked too warm an admiration, Laurence was sure to find his way to her side with his common undertone threat—“D—— n you, madam, you shall smart for this!”—a threat always accompanied with sly pinches, which left their marks beneath her sleeves. Then, straightway, “my dear,” or “my love” would be asked, in the blandest of tones, to sing a song, play a rondo, or perform some act of courtesy for the very guest who had excited his jealousy.
They had few lady visitors. The neighbourhood was remotefrom town, and sparsely inhabited. Mr. Laurence Aspinall’s reputation was as a yellow flag to warn gentlewomen who had daughters or husbands to lose against close intimacy with their neighbours of the Grange. Pitying the isolation of one so formed to adorn society, Mr. Aspinall gave mixed parties at Ardwick Green, in the name of Mrs. Laurence, when the splendour of her attire and the assiduous attention of her husband set rumour to contradict rumour. But save on an occasional family gathering, she saw few of her own sex at Fallowfield.
And her position in her own home was rendered intolerable by the continued presence of Sarah Mostyn, who at first familiar, then impertinent, had become at last openly defiant.
It was not until all efforts to keep the nurse in her proper place had failed, that Augusta appealed to Laurence to discharge her, the woman having refused to take a dismissal from anyone but her master.
“Tchut!” said he, “I’ll soon settle that business!” and forthwith stalked to the nursery, whence his voice was heard in loud command; but the result was not the woman’s removal, only a temporary submission, to be followed by fresh rebellion, and the confirmation of Augusta’s worst suspicions. How often did the aggrieved wife then recall her thoughtless declaration to her mother, that her “husband’s heart must holdherandher only,” not even business to share in its possession! And how thankful she would have been to have had no rival then but business! She was finding the bed she had made for herself a wofully hard one; but she did not succumb readily, she had high spirits and a buoyant nature, and would hardly admit to herself how much she suffered or how great a mistake she had made.
But Cicily, that most faithful of faithful followers, cognisant of her mistress’s wrongs long before her mistress, paid Sarah Mostyn off in her own coin on various occasions, and took care that through one means or other the Ashtons should know what a life their darling led.
Amongst his other little peculiarities Mr. Laurence was an epicure; and one of his favourite tid-bits was that spongy lining of a goose’s frame known as thesoul. It chanced at a family dinner, rather more than a year after Augusta’s return home, that a fine stubble goose formed part of the bill of fare; and Cicily, who had long owed him a grudge for his heartless treatment of her young mistress, determined to pay him off, andexpose him before the whole company. A good caterer for a dainty palate, Cicily knew her power and privileges, but in this case she overshot the mark.
One of the accomplishments of that generation was dexterous carving, and Laurence prided himself on being able to dismember a large fowl without once shifting his fork. The goose was set before himself, and duly helped, but, lo! when his knife would fain have extracted his favourite morsel it scraped bare bones.
The flat bell-rope was pulled violently. Cicily was summoned, and Cicily, in clean linen cap and apron, stood in the doorway curtseying respectfully.
“What have you done with the soul of this goose?” he demanded, in a tone of suppressed passion.
Cicily came a step or two forward with an aspect of marvellous innocence. “Eh, sir, it’s not a goose, it’s a gonder, andgonders have no souls.”
Scarcely an individual present but took the covert inuendo, and glances were exchanged across the board; but the look he shot at the woman as, incapable of speech, he waved her to retire, was one never to be forgotten, so much demoniac wrath was concentrated therein.
From the time when Jabez was acknowledged on ’Change as a Manchester man, was admitted into Manchester “society,” and had absolutely become a member of the same family as his son, Mr. Aspinall punctiliously invited him with his wife; and Laurence, with widely different feelings, followed suit.
It was not until after the noble exploit to which Augusta so nearly fell a sacrifice that Mr. Clegg could be induced so far to listen to Ellen’s desire for conciliation, “now that they were all of one family,” as to accept one of these invitations. After that event he was of Mrs. Ashton’s mind that, “as offenders never pardon,” Augusta needed a friend to watch over her. So he left his books, and his brushes, and his schemes for the class amongst whom he had been reared, and (believing his growing affection for his wife, and the babe she had borne him, a sufficient guarantee to his own heart for his own good faith,) when the Aspinalls next invited, he accepted.
As previously stated, Augusta had not dropped into tame submission all at once; her old wilfulness would have way at times; and the light shafts of her satire were frequently aimed with effect against her recalcitrant lord. More than once Jabez had averted disastrous consequences by checking her vivacityere it went too far. But never had he been so thankful for his self-appointed guardianship as on the night when Cicily thought to pay back her darling’s wrongs.
To his surprise and pleasure, Ben Travis, just returned from the Continent, was of the party. He had not yet called on the family in Oldham Street, and Jabez never asked him wherefore. The cousins had much to talk over, and whilst Laurence Aspinall was pouring wine on his wrath, they discussed a project in which Jabez took an interested part, and which eventuated the following year in the Manchester Mechanics’ Institution. But through all their discussion Jabez never once lost sight of Laurence, and from his excessively polite manner to her he augured ill for Augusta when the restraining presence of friends was removed. He communicated his fears to Travis and when the good-byes were said, and the various conveyances rolled out of the great gates, a fee to Luke the gardener, who was also gatekeeper, kept them open. A whispered word was sufficient for those who had seen the look Laurence directed across the dinner-table from Cicily to his wife, and who knew the character and disposition of the man.
Mr. Travis’s gig and the Ashton’s hackney-coach were kept in waiting close at hand, Mrs. Ashton and Ellen, well wrapped up within, waiting anxiously for they knew not what.
Back towards the closed house went Mr. Ashton and the cousins, treading carefully over the gravel. There was a flagged footway round the building, and from the windows of dining and drawing-rooms lights were still streaming. The last owner had lowered the middle window of the drawing-room as a door of access to the lawn.
As if by accident the curtains had been dragged a little aside in each apartment, and now there were watchers at the apertures. The elder Mr. Aspinall had made an excuse and retired to bed early. Augusta, with a shawl wrapped round her, sat weeping on a sofa in the drawing-room, afraid to go to bed. High words had evidently passed whilst those outside had made their arrangements at the gate.
Presently, into the dining-room sauntered Laurence, with his arm round the shoulders of Sarah Mostyn the shameless nurse. They sat down to the supper table; he poured out wine into a goblet, and they drank from the same glass, he fed her with delicacies, and kissed and caressed her with an assured familiarity which told it was no new experience.
Long they lingered drinking and dallying, and the watchersmight have thought no danger need be apprehended. Suddenly a word of the woman’s, like a match to petroleum, set the whole man ablaze. He rushed from the room with a loud oath, the woman after him, apparently in alarm. The movement her friends made outside in gaining the other window caused Augusta to raise her beautiful head, and at that moment her husband stood before her, brandishing his cavalry sabre, and with his eyeballs glaring, fiercely vociferating, “I’ll teach you madam, to set my servants to insultme!” he made a fearful slash at her.
As she sprang aside with a terrified shriek, the old woodwork of the glass-door gave way, and before the tipsy madman could recover his guard to strike a fresh blow, his sabre was wrenched from him, and himself struggling in the grasp of three powerful men, his own gardener being one.
Poor Mr. Ashton’s care was his stricken child, whose white shoulders, bathed in blood, were washed by a father’s tears. Thankful then was Jabez to have been at hand, and on the alert, with so powerful an ally as Travis; thankful to have saved Augusta’s life at any sacrifice of personal feeling; and only himself could tell what his presence under that roof cost him.
Even Laurence had no inkling of it; the marriage of Jabez had closed his jealous eyes. But now, finding in his old opponent an unseen watcher over his wife—her defender when he had least expected—his baffled rage was something terrible to look upon. He fought, struggled, vociferated, threatened, and foamed at the mouth; and Mr. Aspinall, coming thither in his dressing-gown, aroused by the uproar, could barely master his indignation and disgust as he ordered the men-servants, crowding in half-dressed, to “help to bind that murderous maniac down!”
It was well, too, that Mrs. Ashton and Ellen were close at hand, and a vehicle ready to despatch for a surgeon, for Augusta needed all their care.
Before three days were over there was a little coffin in the house, holding a still-born child, and there was a young mother, with a plaistered shoulder, lying, white as her pillow, in a state of coma.
Dr. Windsor having exercised his best skill, as was his wont left nature to do the rest, and youth and nature, between them, did their work effectually.
Fain would Mr. Ashton have removed his child once and forall. He offered to set up a carriage for her, if she would but leave her husband, and seek a legal separation, insisting that she owed a duty to herself, as well as to her husband. Mr. Aspinall himself begged that she would take up her abode with him, at Ardwick, if only for her own security. He had ceased to find excuses for his son, and his son’s charming wife stood high in his esteem.
But Laurence had been beforehand, and with plausible promises and penitential tears, and an adroit parade of her little Willie, also in tears “for mamma,” won her over to pardon, and to give him another trial; and not all Mr. Ashton’s eloquence, nor Mrs. Ashton’s proverbial battery, could win her from her decision.
“My dear mother,” said she, “remember you told me ‘what could not be cured must be endured,’ and that ‘as I made my bed so must I lie.’ It is a long lane, mother, that has never a turn, I have heard you say many a time; and who knows but Laurence may take a turn now, and reform? At all events, it is my duty to give him a fair trial, and keep my own wayward nature in check, so as not to provoke him; and I must not leave Willie alone with that woman. I think Mr. Clegg would say I am right.”
I am afraid she overrated Mr. Clegg’s magnanimity much as she overrated her wild husband’s promised reformation, for her decision struck a pang in the heart of Jabez, little dreamed of by Ellen. Indeed, it cost him a sore struggle to subdue his concern for Augusta within the bounds of duty to his own wife, whose many virtues were gradually winning their way into his heart, and towards whom his attention never relaxed.