CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH.IN WAR AND PEACE.
A CLAP of thunder burst over Europe, and the great war eagle flapped his monstrous wings again. Napoleon had escaped from Elba ere crops had had time to grow on his trampled battle-fields; yet crops of men rose ripe for the sickle, and home expectations were dashed to the ground.
How many an anxious parent, how many a longing, love-sick maiden, looked for her warrior back from Canada or the Continent, if only on furlough or sick-leave! How many a weary soldier, sated with blood, looked for discharge with pension or reward, and thirsted for the fountain of home joys!
And from how many lips was the cup of delight dashed when the cry “To arms!” rang out from mount to vale, from peak to peak, from town to town, and the sheathed sword flashed forth to light, and forges belched forth flame through day and night, preparing for fresh holocausts in the new carnival of blood!
Trade centres at all such times are most convulsed, as being also centres of humanity—depôts whence fresh relays are drafted from the ranks of men whose peaceful work is at a sudden standstill. But that war blast came like a fiery flash, and commerce, only then a feeble convalescent, sank crushed and hopeless.
Mr. Chadwick felt it keenly, and, but that his more cautious and wealthy brother-in-law came to his help with hand as open as his snuff-box, his credit must have gone. His two eldest sons had gone from him, drawn away by the phantom Glory. One, Richard, was a midshipman upon Collingwood’s ship; the other, Herbert, a lieutenant in the 72nd, or Manchester Volunteers, had departed with his regiment to fight in the Peninsular. A third son, John, had been left to do his quiet duty in the counting-house, but Death had laid its clutches on him soon after his sister Charlotte’s marriage, and Ellen alone kept the house from utter desolation.
She was a girl of strong feelings and quick impulses, but pursued her way with so little show or pretence, she was hardly accredited with all the comfort she brought to the hearth; and scarcely her mother even suspected how that hidden heart of hers could throb—how intense were her emotions.
Her love for every member of the family was deep, but when her brother John died, after the first terrible outburst of grief she dried her tears, and by mere force of will set herself to soothe those who had lost a son. The prolonged absence of the others had been fruitful of pain, and the glad prospect of Herbert’s return now blighted came to her, as to father and mother, with a shock like a stab.
There was another hearth we have ere-while visited—a hearth which, thanks to Jabez, and a few months’ regular employment for the batting-rods and the tanner’s plunger, was less poverty-stricken than it had been—and where Hope had held out delusive banners to herald a soldier’s return, only to furl them again for another march, before eye could meet eye, or lip meet lip.
Thirteen years had come and gone since last Tom Hulme and Bessy Clegg had looked woefully upon each other—thirteen years of unrecorded trial and suffering—yet still they were apart. The home in which he had known her first, Tanner’s Bridge, on which he had first made love to her, had been swept away to make room for Ducie Bridge and a new high-road; and the best years of her womanhood were passing too. Would he ever come back whilst grey-haired Simon could bless their union? Would he ever come back again? Tears fell on Bess’s batting; and Simon had not one word of comfort to give her. Even Matt Cooper, who had long since resigned himself to his widowhood, was magnanimous enough to be sorry.
The new war between the “Corsican Vampire” and allied Europe was fortunately of short duration; but how much of carnage and misery was compressed into that campaign which had its brilliant close at Waterloo!
In the onset of that terrible conflict, Herbert Chadwick and a cousin, fighting side by side, fell in a storm of grape-shot like green corn under an untimely shower of hail, and their blood went to fertilise the Belgian farmer’s future crops of wheat.
Herbert was his father’s favourite son. Not a mail-morning passed but the old man made one of the crowd hurrying downthe narrow way called Market-street-lane to the Exchange, to catch a sight of whatever bulletins might be posted up; and, his own mind relieved, sent an apprentice from the Fountain-street warehouse with the words, “All’s well!” to cheer up those at home. That dreadful morning when his fearful eye ran down the black list of the killed at Waterloo, and rested on Lieutenant Chadwick’s name, the letters seemed to turn blood-red: he shrivelled up like a maple-leaf in a blighting wind; his face and limbs began to twitch, and he fell forward into the arms of a bystander, in a fit.
He was carried by compassionate hands to the nearest house, that of John Shaw, the saddler. A merchant on ’Change (Mr. Aspinall) undertook to break the doubly-calamitous intelligence to Mrs. Chadwick. Dr. Hardie, whom the general excitement had drawn to the spot, was with him in an instant, his white neckcloth was loosened, and, whipping out a lancet, the doctor bled him in the arm without delay. He rallied sufficiently to bear lifting into a carriage, kindly placed at the doctor’s disposal to convey him home.
Dr. Hull was already in waiting. All that their united skill could suggest was tried. His recovery was slow and imperfect; he dragged his right leg after him; he was paralysed for life. He was not a young man, and the supreme shock, coming as it did above a pressure of commercial difficulties, had been too much for him.
It was an overwhelming disaster; but in anxiety and active care for the stricken one, whose life was in imminent peril, the sharp edge of the keener stroke was blunted for Ellen and her mother.
The Ashtons were, as ever, kind and thoughtful.
“William,” said Mrs. Ashton, meditatively to her husband over the tea-urn, the day after Mr. Chadwick’s attack, “we must not forget that if John is not related to us, Sarah” (Mrs. Chadwick) “and Ellen are. ‘Blood is thicker than water;’ and it will not do, for their sakes, to let John’s business go to rack and ruin for want of supervision.”
“Just so, just so,” he replied, reflectively, taking his snuff-box out of his pocket mechanically, and putting it back again unopened, as contrary to tea-table propriety; “I have been thinking the same myself. I will go round to the warehouse to-morrow, and see how matters stand; we must keep things ship-shape somehow till John is himself again.”
And he was as good as his word, though he had really neverthought about it until prompted by his clear-headed wife. He had a habit of thus falling in with her suggestions, though had any one hinted that he followed the lead of a woman, so much younger than himself too, he would have rejected the imputation with scorn. With returning peace came joyful restorations to many homes, humble as well as lofty.
Before the time of their extreme privation, before even Simon was out of work, he had taken one of the smallest of the garden-plots on the higher ground on the opposite side of the Irk, and cultivated it in what little leisure he had, Bess giving him a helping hand occasionally. And by the sale of penny posies to Sunday ramblers from the town, and herbs and salad to the market women in Smithy door, he did his best to beat back the gaunt wolf when the wolf came.
Bess had laid by her batting-wands, put a turf in the grate to kindle up a handful of cinders and slack to boil their supper-porridge, for, though Autumn was striding on, they could not waste fuel on a mid-day fire; Simon was away working in his garden, whilst the daylight held; and she sat, as she frequently did now, on a low stool in front of the grate, her elbows on her knees, and her head on her hands, watching, in a kind of hazy dream, the red glow creeping through the heart of the turf, when a footstep on the threshold caused her to turn round.
Like a picture framed by the doorway, stood the tall figure of a bronzed soldier, with his left arm in a sling. Before the sharp cry of joy had well left her lips, his other arm was around her—both hers around his neck; their lips met in a long kiss, which told of pain and trouble past, and love through all; and then her head fell on his shoulder in a fit of convulsive sobbing such as had not shook her frame for years.
Sorrow and joy have both their baptism of tears!
It was a glad sight for Simon to see them sitting, with their hands locked in each other’s, side by side on an old box, which served them for a seat—all Simon’s lost furniture had not come back—silent from excess of happiness, yet radiant as though the glow of youth were returning in the Midsummer of their lives.
In the roughest war-time the common requirements of life have to be satisfied, and peaceful trades and arts are of necessity carried on, albeit they flourish not. And the farther from the seat of war, and the less private interest is involved, the less business and household routine is fringed on.
Thus Mr. Ashton, whose large capital had enabled him to bide the issues of the Continental and American stoppage of trade, and who had no nearer relatives in danger than his wife’s nephews, pursued his way in comparative quiet. Indeed, he was an easy-going man with much less vigour of character than his wife; and she bore little resemblance to her own sister.
So we may carry our readers away from the poorly-furnished room in a fetid Long Millgate-yard, leaving the re-united lovers to the enjoyment of the present and their reminiscences of the past, and look in upon the Ashtons in their cosy tea-roombeforeWaterloo cast a black shadow over the family.
It was a spacious apartment (as were most of the rooms in that habitation), the walls above the surbase (a wooden moulding some two feet above the skirting-board) were painted a warm dove colour, the surbase and all below in two shades of light blue. The window-tax—a result of war—laid an embargo on light, by restricting size and number, so the house, like most in the neighbourhood, having been built subsequently to “Billy Pitt’s” obnoxious impost, there were only two windows, and those were narrow. They were draped with heavy curtains, and festooned valances of dove-coloured moreen, trimmed with blue orris-lace, and worsted-bullion fringe, with spiral silken droplets here and there to shimmer in the rays of sun or chandelier. For there was a chandelier, of fanciful device, pendent from the wonderfully moulded ceiling, a septenary of lacquered serpents, whose interlaced and twisted tails met upwards, separated below in graceful coils, and branching out their seven heads, turned up their gaping jaws to close them on wax-lights. The chandelier was no misnomer; but the fiery serpents kept their flames for state occasions, when the serpent branches on each side the long Venetian looking-glass, between the windows, were on duty likewise. There was another Venetian glass above the high-painted chimney-piece, so elaborately carved, but here the serpent candelabra lit the room for common use, and were supplemented with lights in tall silver candlesticks upon the centre table.
Spanish mahogany alike were chairs, and table, and Miss Augusta’s grand piano—ranged against the wall from the door, so that the window light should fall upon the keys—and chairs and tables were alike club-footed, massive, and plain; there were two folded card tables, a cellaret, and awork-table, all with tapering legs and club-feet; and there was a ponderous sofa on the flower-besprent Brussels carpet, which, without the adventitious aid of artificial steel springs, was elastic and soft, and wooed the weary to rest aching limbs or aching head upon its cushions. There were no anti-macassars—hair-seating did not soil readily.
The air was odorous with rose, lavender, and jessamine, for the windows were both open, and what little air there was stirring swept over a large summer nosegay in a china vase between the windows. The mahogany teaboard was set with miniature unhandled cups and saucers of china, more precious than the fragrant decoction they were designed to hold; the brass tea-urn hissed and spluttered; Mrs. Ashton in a rich dress sat at the table to infuse the tea; Mr. Ashton had drawn his softly-cushioned easy-chair nearer; it was past five by the tall clock in the hall, and Miss Augusta had not presented herself.
As a thorough business woman, Mrs. Ashton was punctuality itself. She expected her family to be punctual also. Five o’clock, the Manchester hour for tea, and no Augusta!
“James!” (to the footman), “inquire for Miss Ashton; she is not kept in at school—it is a holiday.”
As the man retired, Augusta, in a white cambric frock heavy with tambour-work, tripped in at the door, her diaper pinafore not so clean as it might have been, her hands full of something which she set down on a side table.
“It is past five o’clock, Augusta; where have you been until now? And how came Cicily to send you in to tea with a soiled pinafore?” asked Mrs. Ashton, with the quiet dignity which seldom relaxed.
“Is it? I did not hear the clock strike, I was so busy; and Cicily has not seen my pinafore,” was Augusta’s light consecutive reply.
“So busy!—Cicily not seen you!” her mother exclaimed in surprise. “Let me look at your hands. I am shocked, Augusta! What would Mrs. Broadbent say?” (The hands were worse than the pinafore.) “Have I not told you repeatedly that ‘cleanliness is next to godliness?’ Go to Cicily and be washed immediately, or you can have no tea.”
Augusta pouted.
“Must I, papa?”
The management of this child was the only point on which Mr. and Mrs. Ashton differed.
“Well, my dear, your mamma says so; but I think for this once it may be overlooked, if you will be more careful another time,” said he, willing to excuse and temporise.
“‘Only this once,’ William, ‘is the parent of thrice,’” responded Mrs. Ashton, gravely, as she poured out the tea, giving something like milk-and-water to Miss Augusta. “You will spoil that child; and if you spoil her to-day, she will spoil herself to-morrow. However, asyouare inclined to tolerate that which I think disrespectful to us, and wanting in self-respect on the child’s part, I can say no more.”
Thus Mrs. Ashton yielded against her judgment; Mr. Ashton took out his snuff-box, to put it back like a culprit; and Miss Augusta sat down to the table, not knowing whether to be more pleased or sorry that she had got her own way.
To turn the subject, Mr. Ashton asked—
“What is that you put on the card-table, my dear?”
“Oh! I’ll show you,” and away the young lady was running, only to be recalled by her mother’s decided—
“After tea, Augusta.”
So after tea it was that Miss Augusta brought her treasure to her father—sundry sheets of paper, on which scraps of variously-coloured leather had been arranged and pasted in ornamental patterns, floral and geometrical, aided by the stamps employed in piercing brace-ends for the embroiderers, and in cutting stars to cover the umbrella-wheels inside.
“Who did those?” asked mother and father in a breath.
“Jabez Clegg, in the warehouse. Aren’t they pretty?” was Augusta’s ready reply, as she looked admiringly on her curious pictures.
“Oh! then that accounts for your being late, and in that condition at the tea-table,” said Mrs. Ashton, as she glanced from the rich designs before her to the sullied hands and pinafore.
“And so Jabez Clegg has been wasting our leather to make playthings for you?” remarked Mr. Ashton interrogatively, in a not unkindly tone of voice.
“No, he hasn’t!” answered little miss, briskly. “He only used the waste tiny bits. I wanted to take a big piece to make a housewife” (a case for thread and needles), “and he would not let me have it. He said he had no right to give it, and I had no right to take it. Was he right, mamma?”
[Along with many other vain fashions, “papa” and“mamma” had come over from France to supersede our more sterling “father” and “mother,” with other refugees from the Revolution.]
“Yes, my dear, quite right; but I wish my little daughter would not run so much into the kitchen and warehouse among the apprentices,” said the mother, kindly, smoothing down the light brown hair, in which the sunbeams seemed to weave golden threads. “It is not becoming in a young lady.”
Mr. Ashton, who had been all the while examining the glowing devices before him, interrupted her with—
“I think I have discovered a new faculty in our apprentice. I shall buy Jabez Clegg a box of colours to-morrow. We are sadly in want of fresh patterns, and I think he can make them;” and Mr. Ashton took a large pinch of snuff on the strength of his discovery.
And Jabez, for the first time in his life the possessor of paints and brushes, became valuable to his master.