CHAPTER THE FOURTH.MISCHIEF.
IT was a time of distress at home and war abroad. Glory’s scarlet fever was as rife an epidemic in Manchester as elsewhere. The town bristled with bayonets; corps of volunteers in showy uniforms, on parade or exercise, with banners flying, dotted it like spots on a peacock’s tail; the music of drum and fife drowned the murmurs of discontented men, the groans of poverty-stricken women, and the cries of famishing children. All nostrums were prescribed for the evils of famine except a stoppage of the war. The rich made sacrifices for the poor; pastry was banished by common consent from the tables of the wealthy in order to cheapen flour; soup-kitchens were established for the poor, and in the midst of the general dearth the nineteenth century struggled into existence.
It was this war-fever which had carried off Bessy Clegg’s sweetheart, Thomas Hulme, to Ireland, in Lord Wilton’s Regiment of Lancashire Volunteers, three years before. The honest, true-hearted fellow could not write for himself, postage was expensive and uncertain, and in all those three years only two letters, written by a comrade, had reached the girl. To her simple, uninformed mind, Ireland was as foreign and distant a country as Australia is to us in these days. And to be stationed there with his regiment amongst those “wild Irishmen,” conveyed only the idea of battles and bloodshed. Yet she kept a brave heart on the matter, and hid her anxieties from her father as well as she was able. In some respects little Jabezwasa Godsend to her. The frequent attention he required combined with her labours at the batting-frame, and her household duties, tended to distract her mind from the dark picture over which she was so much inclined to brood, and to make her, if anything, more cheerful. Once more the voice which had been silent tuned up in song, for the gratificationof the youngster, and in amusing him she insensibly cheered and refreshed herself.
Yet as she trilled her quaint ballads, or Sabbath-school hymns, she little thought her vocalization was to furnish an envious mind with a shaft to wound herself, and the one of all others dearer than herself.
Soon after the memorable christening feast, Matthew Cooper and his family had removed—or “flitted,” as they called it—from Barlow’s Yards to Skinners’ Yard; and Sally, that peaceable man’s termagant wife, was not the most desirable of neighbours. The tea, and the currant-cake, and the beef, on that unusually well-spread board, had filled her with pleasure for the time, but turned to gall and bitterness ere they were digested. Why should the Cleggs be so high in the favour of Mr. and Madam Clough, and her Mat get nothing better than half-a-crown-piece? He’d quite as much to do in saving the brat’s life as Simon had, and with such a family, wanted it a fine sight more. So she argued and argued with herself, quite ignoring, or blind to the fact that it was not the mere impulse which saved, but the humanity whichkeptthe babe, that Mr. Clough recognized, and never lost sight of.
As Simon grew in favour at the tannery, the more excited grew Sally Cooper, until nothing would do but a removal to the opposite yard, where she could see for herself the “gooin’s on o’ them Cleggs;” and once there, she contrived to harass Bess by numberless little spiteful acts, as well as by her vituperative tongue.
Nor did little Jabez himself escape. Parson Brookes, grumbling loudly at every downward step, found his way to Bess o’ Sims, guided by the quick-swishing, regular beat of the batting-wands.
Mrs. Clough having, by ocular demonstration, satisfied herself that Bess was a sufficiently notable house-wife and a kindly nurse, had replaced the worn out long-clothes which Jabez inherited from “brother Joe,” by a set of more serviceable and suitable short ones; had, moreover, sent an embrocation to allay Simon’s rheumatic pains, and to crown the whole, supplied a go-cart for the boy, to help him to walk, and yet leave the hands of industrious Bess at liberty.
As Miss Jewsbury has said, in her exquisite story of “The Rivals,” that go-cart “was the drop added to the brimming cup, the touch given to the falling column.”
Mat’s worse-half—an inveterately clean woman, be it said—wasoccupied with her Saturday’s “redding up,” when she saw the wood-turner carry it in; and she thereupon trundled her mop at the door so vigorously and viciously, that the children instinctively shrank into corners, or ran out of the yard altogether, beyond reach of her weighty arm. And as, one by one, they ventured back, after what they thought a safe interval, creeping stealthily over the freshly-sanded floor, and mayhap leaving the impression of wet clogs thereon, jerks, cuffs, and slaps were administered with a freedom born of her supposed wrongs.
When Mat came home, to offer his wages upon the household altar, the storm had not subsided, and he was fain to retreat to the quiet fireside of Simon to smoke his pipe in peace, and escape its pitiless peltings. He could not have selected a worse haven. It was a flagrant going over to the enemy. Thither she followed him in her wrath, and in her blind fury assailed not only him, but Bess, Simon, Mr. Clough, and Joshua Brookes, whom she mingled in indiscriminate confusion, casting aspersions on the girl, which wounded nobody more than her own husband.
In the midst and in spite of all this, Jabez grew apace. Life was not altogether sweetened for him by Mrs. Clough’s kindness, only made a little less bitter, and certainly not less hard; since almost his first experience with the go-cart was to tilt at the open doorway, and pitch head-foremost down a flight of three steps into the stony yard, whence frightened Bess raised him, with a bleeding nose and a great bump on his forehead, amidst the mocking laughter of Sal Cooper.
A chair was overturned across the doorway as a barrier, until Simon could place a sliding foot-board there. But Jabez had still many a knock against chair or table until Bess made a padded roll for his forehead, as a protective coronal. Then every tooth cost him a convulsion, and any one less patient and tender hearted than Bess would have abandoned her self-imposed charge in despair, his accidents and ailments made such inroads on her rest and on her time.
But even patience has its limits, and Sally Cooper strained the cable until it snapped. At a war of words Bess was no match for her antagonist: and, rather than endure a second contest, the Cleggs left the fiery serpent behind, and quitted the yard.
Not willingly, for Simon, contrary to the roving habits of ordinary weekly tenants, had not changed his abode since his wedding-day, and the river was as a friend to him. He declaredhe “could na sleep o’ neets without th’ wayter singin’ to him.” However, he connived to find a very similar tenement, in just such anothercul-de-sac, with just such another tripe-dresser’s cellar underneath, and that, too, without quitting Long Millgate. Midway between the college and the tannery this court was situated, its narrow mouth opening to the breezes wafting down Hanover Street: they could still look out on the verdure of Walker’s Croft, and the Irk laved its stony base as at that same Skinner’s Yard, which Simon lived to see demolished.
It was May; bright, sunny, perfumed May. The hawthorn hedges on the ridge of the croft were white with scented blossoms, and the Irk—not the muddled stream which improvement (?) is fast shutting out of remembrance—went on its dimpled way, smiling at the promise of the season. The echoes of the May-day milkcart bells, and the flutter of their decorative ribbons, were dying out of all but infantile remembrance;—the month was more than a fortnight old.
It was 1802, and Jabez was almost three years old. He was running, or rather scrambling, about the uneven court, gathering strength of limb and lung from their free use, albeit at the cost of dirt on frock and face, and the trouble of washing for Bess.
She was singing at her batting-frame—not an unusual thing now, for rumour had whispered in her ear that the Lancashire Volunteers were on their homeward march. Even as she sang, a stout young fellow in uniform stopped at the narrow entrance of the court, and questioned two or three gossiping women, who, with arms akimbo, blocked up the passage, if they knew the whereabouts of Simon Clegg, the tanner, and his daughter Bess.
“What! th’ wench as has the love-choilt?” answered one of the women.
“The girl I mean had no child when I saw her last,” responded he, between his set teeth.
“Happen that’s some toime sin’, mester, or it’s not th’ same lass. That’s her singin’ like a throstle o’er her work at the oppen winder.”
“And that’s her choilt,” said another, ending by a lusty call, “Jabez, lad, coom hither!”
Jabez, taught to obey his elders, came at a trot, in answer to the woman’s call. The volunteer looked down upon him. The child had neither Bess’s eyes nor Bess’s features; but heheard the voice of Bess, and over the woman’s shoulder he caught a glimpse of her face at the distant window. ItwasBess, sure enough!
Sick at heart, Tom Hulme, for it was he, leaned for support against the side of the dark entry. These women but confirmed what he had heard in Skinners’ Yard from Matt Cooper’s vindictive wife. The deep shadow of the entry hid his change of countenance. Without a condemnatory word, without a step forward towards the girl whose heart was full of him, he steadied himself and his voice, and mustering courage to say, “No, that is not the lass I want,” strode resolutely out of the entry; and, bending his steps to the right, turned up Toad Lane, and so on to the “Seven Stars,” in Withy Grove, where he was billeted.
He had come back from Ireland full of hope, andthiswas the end of it! He had been constant, and she was frail! She whom he had left so pure had sunk so low that, though she bore the brand of shame, she could sing blithely at her work, unconscious or reckless of her degradation! Tom had only been a hand-loom weaver, and was but a private in his regiment, but he had a soul as constant in love, as sensitive to disgrace, as the proudest officer in the corps. He might have doubted Sally Cooper’s artful insinuations, but for the unconscious confirmation of the other women, and the personal testimony of poor little Jabez; the innocent child, borne with sorrow by his own dead mother, bringing sorrow to his living maiden-foster-mother.
The little lispings of the child conveyed no impression to Bess’s understanding, but one of the women bawled out to her from the open court—
“Aw say, theer’s bin a volunteer chap axin’ fur a lass neamed Bess Clegg, but he saw thee from th’ entry, and said yore not th’ lass he wanted!”
Her heart gave a great leap, and the blood flushed up to her pale face. Could it be possible that there was another Bess Clegg of whom a volunteer could be in search? Yet, had that beenherTom, he would have known his Bess again, even after five—ay, or twenty years. She would knowhimanywhere! And so all that day, and the next, her heart kept in a flutter of expectation and perplexity. She wondered he did not come. The regiment was in town; he surely had not been misled in his inquiries because they had “flitted.” Yet in all her thoughts the grim reality had no place. Her perfect innocence and singleness of heart had never suggested such a possibility to her.
The days went by from the 13th to the 22nd, yet he came not. After working-hours Simon tried to hunt him up; but the billeting system, and ill-lighted streets, set his simple tactics at defiance. On the latter day, Lord Wilton gave a dinner in the quadrangle of the College, to the non-commissioned officers and privates in his regiment, to celebrate their return, and the peace and plenty then restored to the land.
At the first sound of fife and drum, Bess snatched up Jabez, and leaving house and batting-frame to take care of themselves, rushed along the street to the “Sun Inn” corner, where Long Millgate turns at a sharp angle, the old Grammar School and the Chetham College gate standing at the outer bend of the elbow. The better to see, she mounted the steps of the house next to the “Sun”—a house kept by a leather-breeches maker,—and strained her eyes as the gay procession wound from the apple-market, passed the handsome black-and-white frame-house of the Grammar School’s head-master, and, with banners flying, and drums beating, marched under the ancient arched gateway between a double row of blue-coat boys.
She held Jabez high up in her arms to let him see, and his little arms clasped her neck, as she scanned every passing soldier’s features. Two-thirds of the corps had passed—she saw the loved and looked-for face, and, radiant with delight, stretched forward, and in eager tones called—“Tom!”
There was a mutual start of recognition; two faces crimsoned to the brow; then one white as ashes, a keen meaning glance at the child, teeth clenched, and eyes set with stern resolution; and, without another look, without a word, Tom Hulme went on under the Whale’s-jawbone gateway: and Bess, with brain bewildered, hands and limbs relaxed, sank on the breeches-maker’s steps in a dead faint.
A lady (Mrs. Chadwick), who had a little girl by the hand, caught Jabez as they fell, and putting his hand in her daughter’s, bade her take care of him—she was perhaps a year or two older than he,—whilst she raised the poor young woman’s head, and applied a smelling-bottle to her nose.
Strange parting, strange meeting! How close the founts of sweet and bitter waters lie! How often separate streams of life meet and part again; some to meet and blend in after years, some to meet never more!
Another week, and Lord Wilton’s Lancashire volunteer regiment had a man the less, the line had a man the more. Private Thomas Hulme had exchanged.