CHAPTER THE THIRTY-FIRST.21CORONATION-DAY.
MISFORTUNE binds closer than prosperity. The calamity which tied Laurence Aspinall down in a strait-waistcoat to a bed of fever, with shaven head and sightless eyes, touched the Ashtons in a tender point. Themselves the parents of an only child, the very crown and glory of their lives, their sympathies went forth to Mr. Aspinall, in spite of his haughty assumption. Indeed, distress brought him down to the common level of humanity; and having neither sister, aunt, nor cousin to undertake the care of his sick son for love, and not for fee, he learned the comparative powerlessness of wealth, and hailed with all the gratitude in his nature the occasional visits of Mrs. Ashton, in whose stately bearing, no doubt, he recognised a sort of kinship.
It was, however, not Mrs. Ashton the business woman, not Mrs. Ashton the lofty lady, but Mrs. Ashton the mother who laid her cool hand on the young man’s fevered forehead, questioned the nurses, made suggestions for the benefit of the invalid, and by means of a “Ladies’ Free Registry” in Chapel Walk, found a staid woman of experience to act as housekeeper, and bring the disorganised household into order without treading on the toes of attached but incapable Kitty.
The head of Antinous shorn of its glorious locks, swathed in lotion-cloths, tossing in delirium, would scarcely appear so attractive as to fill the most timid mother with fears for a romantic daughter’s heart, and so whilst sympathy was awake vigilance slumbered. Yet never need vigilance have been more awake. She saw him as he was—Augusta, as he had been. Through other channels than the maternal she heard of his condition from day to day, and how in his delirium he had mixed up her name with the slang of the cock-pit, the race-course,and the prize-ring; but with strange infatuation she ignored all that should have warned, and clung to all that was pleasant to her own self-love. Never had she been so assiduous in her visits to her aunt Chadwick and her cousin Walmsley; and her smiling “I’ve brought my work and come to sit with you this afternoon,” should have been translated, “I hope John or Mr. Travis will drop in. They are sure to have something to say about Mr. Laurence; it is so dreadful not to know how he is going on.”
And pretty generally her calculations were correct; the two gentlemen were interested in Aspinall as a member of their yeomanry corps, apart from private friendship, and were constant in their inquiries, even finding their way to his bed-side; and Mr. Benjamin Travis, who could not very well every day manage to meet Mr. Chadwick accidentally on his way from the warehouse, and lend his stout arm as a support, appeared only too glad to be the bearer of bulletins from Ardwick, as an excuse for calling in Oldham Street and hovering about the chair or the window where Ellen Chadwick sat at her sewing or knitting, and grew silent on his entrance, blushing when she heard his footstep or his voice in the hall, from motives sadly misinterpreted.
There was no mistaking the true purport of his frequent visits and assiduous attention to the crippled old gentleman; so Augusta having settled in her own mind that Ellen was either too reserved or too shy to give her big, good-natured but timid lover proper encouragement, took upon herself to play into his hands and make opportunities for his wooing.
“What a delightful afternoon for a walk!” Whether he or she made the observation, the other was sure to assent; and then wilful Miss Augusta, unaccustomed to be gainsaid, and seconded by her aunt, also a secret ally of Ben Travis, would drag her cousin forth in defiance of any excuse or protestation, to the undisguised satisfaction of their magnificent cavalier.
It was remarkable that on these occasions, whether they took their way up Ancoats, or Dale Street, or Piccadilly, or Garret Road, they would eventually be led so near to Ardwick Green that it would have been unkind had not Mr. Travis “just stepped across to see how Mr. Laurence progressed.”
And so, too, whenever she went abroad with Cicily at her heels, or when Cicily was sent on errand, nothing would content her imperative young mistress but that she should hasten(whether in her way or out of it), with “Mrs.Ashton’s compliments,” to ascertain the condition of the invalid scapegrace.
Many a scolding did breathless Cicily get in consequence from angry Kezia, the queen of the kitchen, which Augusta paid her messenger for with coins, or ribbons, or kerchiefs, or smooth words, as might be most convenient at the time. And Mrs. Ashton was accredited by the Aspinalls with a degree of attention never contemplated by herself.
But there was one person in the house Augusta avoided from that afternoon at the end of March, when her fascinating hero would have lost his life but for a much humbler hero, of less pretension and fewer attractions. She might have been blind as father and mother to his attachment until that afternoon; but that one wild, impassioned, agonised look of Jabez into her eyes had opened them for ever, she felt she had tasked him beyond human endurance, and was ashamed to look him in the face.
The presumption of the ex-apprentice paled before his devotion and self-abnegation, but, self-conscious, after that first outburst of thanks on the Green, she had shrunk from meeting him in hall or staircase, and had always a reason ready why he should not be invited to their own tea-table when father or mother proposed it.
Public events march on irrespective of private joys or sorrows, and no individual goes out into the world after three months’ seclusion to find things just as he left them. The first use Laurence Aspinall made of his eyes was to look at himself in a mirror; the second on his return to Manchester, to select a substitute for the clustering curls of which he had been despoiled. Closely shut in the carriage which Mr. Ashton lightly designated a box, he was driven down Market Street, to discover that the Spirit of Improvement, “fell bane of all that’s picturesque,” had touched the ancient, many-gabled, black-and-white houses with which his earliest recollections were associated, and they were crumbling into dusty ruins before the potent incantation “Space.” It was the beginning of a very necessary widening of the main thoroughfares of the growing commercial metropolis; but the blanks in the narrow street took Laurence by surprise.
There was a newspaper the more for his restored sight to scan, albeit theManchester Guardian, which Jeremiah Garnett and John Edward Taylor first gave to the world on the fifth of May, was scarcely likely to take his view of party politics,or of his share in the Peterloo massacre, which was still a disturbing element in the town. Just now the paper, which he found at the perruquier’s, was given over to the discussion of the approaching coronation of George IV., which likewise formed the theme of conversation, not only at the wig-maker’s, but whithersoever he turned when once more presentable.
Somehow, though he found his way to the warehouse, and the cockpit, and the Assembly Billiard Club, and to Tib Street, where Bob the groom had a pretty daughter very much at the young man’s disposal, he did not present himself at his Mosley Street friend’s as soon as might have been expected, considering all things; and Augusta, in the most becoming of morning robes, watching with eager expectation for his coming, began to pant and chill with the sickness of hope deferred. He was by no means the only admirer of the lovely heiress, and was sufficiently desirous to complete his conquest before other competitors were fairly in the field; but he was in perplexity how to deal with Jabez Clegg, who stood in his way after another sort. He was grateful—after a fashion—for the preservation of his life; butungrateful, inasmuch as Jabez was the preserver.
“Hang it!” said he, in conference with himself, as he tied on a neck-cloth at the glass, “if the fellow had but taken the five hundred pounds, there’d have been an end of it; and one could have wiped one’s hands of him. What right had the beggarly charity-boy to refuse a reward, as if he were a gentleman, I should like to know? I wonder what Kit Townley and Walmsley were about—the cowardly ninnies—to let an upstart like that pull me out of the hole. I’d almost as lief have been drowned.”
And away went a spoiled cravat across the room in his temper; and he rummaged for a fresh one, to the detriment of linen, as he went on—
“There’s one thing, I must either bring down my pride or give up the girl, and be d—— d to it! That old Ashton, with his ‘Just so!’ like a cuckoo, would certainly shut the door in my face if I neglected to make a set speech, and thank his preciousprotege, who knocks you down with one hand and picks you up with the other. Well, I don’t feel inclined to surrender the finest girl in Lancashire, and with such a fortune as she’ll have, so I’m in for it. I must make a virtue of necessity. Egad! I’ll write to this Mr. Clegg. No, I won’t. It would be a feather in his cap to have a thanksgiving letter of mine to exhibit.”
Having at length determined his course, Mr. Laurence betook himself to Mosley Street, made his bow duly and gracefully to Mrs. Ashton and the young lady, keeping the hand of the latter as long within his own as etiquette would permit, and sending the warm blood mantling to her cheek, with a supplicating glance of devotion as potent as words. Then, with some little prolixity, he professed his desire to “thank his noble preserver” for the life he had saved; and at his request Mr. Clegg (whom he might just as well have thanked in the warehouse without ceremony) was sent for. Coming into the parlour all unwittingly as he did, to find Laurence Aspinall, handsome as ever, and more interesting from illness, standing under the lacquered-serpent chandelier in close proximity to Augusta, sparkling with animation, and blushing like the rose he had just offered her with a pretty simile, his emotions so overmastered him that the polished gentleman had him at a disadvantage, and shone in comparison.
Both Augusta and her mother noted the contrast between the elegant manner, suave tones, and rounded periods of Laurence Aspinall’s thanks and the curt disclaimer of Jabez, though their deductions were different. Augusta was in raptures with the rose-giver.
“Ah! my dear, all is not gold that glitters. There is more sterling metal in your father’s salesman, mark my words, than in the tinselled lieutenant,” was the summing-up of the elder, as she replaced cake and wine in side-board and cellaret. She was clearly no friend to Aspinall now that he had recovered sense and sight.
The town, which had been strong and outspoken in its condemnation of the new king during the trial of Queen Caroline, was now all alive with preparations to celebrate his coronation with befitting magnificence, one branch of trade vying with another which should make the greatest display in the coming procession to the Green, the like of which never had been, and never would be again. And this competition, productive of marvellous results, due, in a great measure, to trade rivalry and an ambitious desire to outshine, was set down by historians, rightly or wrongly, as a proof of the excessive loyalty of the Mancestrians.
In all classes, from the highest to the lowest, something was being done, and nothing was talked of, thought of, dreamed of, but the coronation and the procession. In courts, and alleys there were making, and mending, and washing, and nolittle pinching was undergone by hard-working fathers and mothers to provide the girls with white cambric frocks, tippets, and net caps, or the lads with fresh jackets and breeches and shoes, so as not to disgrace the Sunday-schools under whose banners they were to walk.
The finest horses of the Old Quay Company and Pickford’s were put into new harness and the finest condition, and every lurry (a long, flat, sideless waggon) was called into requisition. Smiths, saddlers, sign and scene painters, were at work day and night for weeks; and such was the request for banners that ladies undertook the work when skilled labour was not to be found.
The important ceremony was fixed for the 19th of July. On the 17th a deputation of small-ware weavers waited on Mr. Ashton in despair. They could get neither flag nor banner; the painter had thrown over the order at the last moment.
“An’ Tummy Worthington’s getten a foine un, measter. It’ll be a sheame an’ a disgrace to us o’ if we let Worthington’s cut us eawt.”
[The said Worthington was a rival small-ware manufacturer].
Mr. Ashton had recourse to his snuff-box, and then to his wife.
“My dear, what is to be done? There will be no flag. The painters cannot execute the jobs in hand. Worthington’s have a fine one I hear.”
“No flag! That will never do. We must have a flag. Let me consider.”
Ellen Chadwick was busy helping Augusta to make favours for the men. She looked up.
“Do you not think Mr. Clegg could paint you one?” she suggested.
Mr. Ashton brightened, but his “Just so!” was nipped in the bud by the recollection that there was no time.
“Where there’s a will there’s a way,” said Mrs. Ashton, and sought out Jabez.
“It is quite out of my line, but I can try. It would be a pity to disappoint the men,” answered he.
“And nothing beats trying but doing!” added Mrs. Ashton.
Silk and colours were procured. There was no leisure for complex design or elaboration. At that time the dark blue covers of the Dutch tapes in gross bore the symbolic device of the flax plant within a rude scroll. This Jabez transferred in colours to his silk on a colossal scale, both sides bearing thesame emblem of their trade, more effective on its completion than any elaborate work. He had bargained to be left without interruption. The men fidgeted about the warehouse in a state of nervous trepidation (it was an important matter to them), but at dawn on the 19th it was finished, and borne off by the weavers in triumph and exultation.
Market Street Lane being in ruins at one end, and a narrow gully at the other, Mosley Street became the natural course for the procession (two miles and a half in length) from Peter’s Field to the Green, where a royal salute was to be fired; and like every other house on the line of route, Mr. Ashton’s was filled with guests, and from garret to basement every window had its streamer, and was crowded with gaily-dressed spectators, mostly feminine, the gentlemen of the town taking part in the procession, officially or otherwise. The Chadwicks and Mrs. Walmsley were there of course, and Mrs. Clough amongst others; and on another floor Jabez—who being above the warehousemen, and not a master, did not walk—had as a companion good Bess Hulme, who with her husband had come over from Whaley-Bridge, where there was, of course, a holiday. To Tom had been assigned the honour of chief standard bearer.
In all such processions the military element, with its brilliant uniforms and stirring music prevails. But here (where every item of the cavalcade had its own brass band) were also all the dignitaries of the church, with every silver badge of office resplendently burnished for the occasion; the borough-reeve, and other magistrates, and constabulary, in new uniforms; the lamplighters with new smocks, carrying their ladders and cans; the firemen and fire-engines, bright as paint and polish could make them; the gentlemen of the town, all with favours; the Sunday-school children, marshalled under their respective banners or tablets, walking six abreast; the Ladies’ Jubilee School; the Green-Coat School; and the Blue-Coat School, on which Jabez looked down with curiously-mingled feelings.
But the marked feature of the magnificent procession was the display made by the trades, with their banners, a lurry accompanying each, bearing well-dressed workmen and machines in full operation.
At the head of these came two figures, representing Adam and Eve, in a perfect bower of greenery, as representatives of the primitive condition before dress was invented. They were followed by a lurry, on which tailors (whose art is the first onrecord) sat cross-legged, and stitched and pressed, as if on a shopboard, whilst a select band of journeymen walked after, bearing minature miniature garments on wands, or ferruginous geese and sleeveboards.
The blacksmiths wrought on their anvil, and carried also on long poles, horse-shoes, &c. The brass and copper smiths, likewise at work, had a bright array of kettles, candlesticks, and a mounted man in armour, as had also the tin-plate workers. The glass-blowers made a goodly array, and gave away tokens as they went. The men wore hats and caps brittle and brilliant, with wavy plumes of spun glass, whilst birds, ships, goblets, and decanters on their poles glistened in the beams of the hot sun. A printing-press distributed appropriate verses, worked off in the course of the procession. And St. Crispin’s followers waxed their threads and plied their awls on boots and shoes as they and their benches were borne along, followed by their leather-aproned fraternity, holding aloft their productions, from the most gigantic of Wellingtons to the tiniest infant’s slipper.
All branches of the cotton trade were represented. There was cotton in bags; twist in bales; carding, roving, spinning, weaving, all going on under the eyes of the onlookers, with the workpeople following in their best and brightest.
Shouts and hurrahs attended the whole line of march, not wholly unaccompanied by hisses; but as the small-ware weavers passed Mr. Ashton’s the cheers were deafening. A loom was at work weaving lengths of binding for garters, on which was inwoven “God save King George IV.,” with the date, and these were lifted on long wands to the ladies at the windows on their way, or scattered to others in the street; and as Tom Hulme caught the eye of Jabez, he pointed proudly to their banner, which had no rival in all the elaborately painted flags waving in the wind, and the impromptu artist was well satisfied. But the brightest day has its cloud. As the Manchester Yeomanry went prancing past, Travis and Walmsley alike saluted the ladies at the drawing-room window, but to the pain of Jabez and the indignation of Mrs. Ashton, Lieutenant Aspinall had the audacity to kiss his hand to Augusta.