CHAPTER THE THIRTY-THIRD.CLOGS.
LEAVING the Chadwicks at their own door, where Captain Travis would fain have lingered had he been encouraged, Jabez and he fell back as guards to their reverend friend, whose excitability might otherwise have involved him in some unpleasantness, so disorderly a riff-raff occupied the streets.
Turning down Church Street, they pursued their dimly lighted way along Cannon Street, (so named from dismounted cannon captured from “rebels” which served as corner posts), through Hanging Ditch to Hyde’s Cross; thence past the deserted Apple Market, and Dr. Smith’s ancient labyrinth of a house, to the Parson’s less antiquated domicile in the corner by the Grammar School and those College-gates which had been the portals of peace and promise to Jabez, and not only to him, but to hundreds besides.
The excitement of old Joshua had been toned down amongst the wax-lights and pleasant faces around the Ashtons’ well-spread supper-table, and at first he was disposed to be conversable after his own peculiar manner. They had purposely avoided Shude-Hill Market by an ample circuit; but stragglers of both sexes from the scene of riot lay maundering or asleep in their path, or crossed it at every turn, in all stages of inebriation and disorder; until the natural irritability of the chaplain (increased by failing health) broke forth in loud-voiced indignation, ending in a wail that he was “getting old and powerless,” or he would “rise like another John Knox, and denounce the wickedness rampant in the land.”
“A good man lives there, Jabez,” said he, pointing to the black-and-white home of the head-master, where lighted windows told of hospitality awake, “a good man, but for whom I should not be alive to tell you; but there are those in the pulpit, mylads, whom the Church ought to spue out, lest they poison the flocks it is their duty to feed. Can the stream be pure if the fountain be polluted? And how shall we rebuke the gross excesses of the untaught rabble whilst chambering, gluttony, and drunkenness defile the high places of the land? Ugh! There wants another flood to wash Europe sweet and clean. The sin on the earth was not greater in the days of Noah!”
They were crossing the space before the two closed gates when he paused for lack of breath; and Travis, with no thought but to change the subject, observed to Jabez, over the head of the panting pastor—
“How quiet this little nook of ground is now! Yet to me and no doubt to you, Mr. Clegg, it is haunted by ghosts of old times!”
That set Joshua off again.
“Ugh! to hear a lad of five-and-twenty talk of old times! What’s the world coming to? Ghosts indeed! It had like to have been haunted by ghosts of something more than old times as Jabez and I know to our cost. I’ve never been right since the young ruffians had me in their clutches! And mark you, my lads, and think of it when you have young ones of your own to rear: there’s no worse sign for a country or a family than when the young jibe and jeer, mock and scorn their elders. When grey hairs fail to command respect, virtue, principle, and religion are at their lowest ebb.”
He stood within his own gate as he said this, and as Tabitha opened the door for her master, he checked all reply with—
“There! you’ve had a sermon for nothing. Ugh! you’ll forget it when the old man’s back turns. Good night, lads! See you steer clear of brawls, and give drunken fools a wide berth.”
Leaving the young men so abruptly dismissed to retrace their steps towards Hyde’s Cross, it may be as well if we throw a light on some of Parson Brookes’s dark allusions. Time had not smoothed the old man’s eccentricities, nor modified the antagonism between the Grammar School boys and the ex-master. They were always at war, and there never was wanting acasus belli. The previous September he had been more than usually irritated by a lampoon which began—
“O Jotty, you dogYour house we well knowIs headquarters of prog——”
“O Jotty, you dogYour house we well knowIs headquarters of prog——”
“O Jotty, you dogYour house we well knowIs headquarters of prog——”
“O Jotty, you dog
Your house we well know
Is headquarters of prog——”
the purport of which was to fix on him the stigma of inviting a friend to dine, and regaling him with a black-pudding only.
Lashed to fury, he burst into the Grammar School when the first and second-form boys were assembled in the afternoon to rehearse the speeches which, according to custom, they were to deliver in public at the annual commemoration in October. He braved them in his hottest style, winding up with, “You are a set of blockheads! I would not come to hear your speeches if you would pay me for it!”
There was a general cry, “Turn him out! Turn him out!” But Jotty would not be turned out. He stuck himself in the doorway with his legs against the door-post, and his back against the door itself, to the extreme risk of broken limbs, whilst his young and vigorous opponents brought their strength to bear upon the door to force him out.
With such odds he was sure to be overcome; but, driven into the yard, he fought with his antagonists like a mastiff at bay, and they, like the cowards they must have been, to have assailed in a body an old man (under any provocation), by sheer force of numbers, bore him backwards to the wall, and, but for the opportune arrival of Dr. Smith, would have repeated the outrage perpetrated on Jabez Clegg eight years before.
He might well say Dr. Smith had saved his life. Such a fall, whether in high or low water, to so old a man, would have been certain destruction. They broke his heart, I think, if they did not break his limbs, for he never was the same man afterwards. Even old Mrs. Clowes used to rally him on his frequent “fits of the dumps.”
Whether Jabez and Ben Travis had, or had not, lost sight of the Parson’s homily, they were linked arm in arm, the rich yeomanry officer and the unpretending smallware-salesman, just as, nearly nine years previously, the big, raw-boned youth, with a heart large enough to match his frame, had linked his arm in that of the poor Blue-coat boy, as a friend and protector, when as yet his admittance into society was undreamed of.
Where the four roads met at Hyde’s Cross, a staggering Charlie (as the watchmen were called, much as, at this day, they are Bobbies) passed them, with his horn lantern and staff, and his rattle in his belt, proclaiming—
“Past ten o’clock! (hiccup). And a foin moonleet neet!”
The two stood for a moment; then, animated by a desireto ascertain if Joshua Brookes had spoken sooth, or, in his spleen exaggerated, they turned up Shude-hill, all alive with people who were ordinarily at that hour in bed, and made their way to the market.
Exaggerate! Joshua Brookes had seen but in part, and painted but in part. Every avenue to the market was a scene of debauchery. Hogarth’s print of “Gin Lane” was feeble beside it. The distribution of food was over, but that of drink continued. The oil-lamps of the street, the dying illumination lamps, and the misty moonlight showed a picture of unimaginable grossness; whilst their ears were assailed with foulness which would have shocked a hardened man of the world—how much more these inexperienced young friends!
Children, men, and women, their clothes torn or disarrayed, lay singly, or in groups, on the paths, or in the gutters, asleep or awake, drunk, sick, helpless, exposed; there was fighting and cursing over the ale yet procurable; there were loaves in the gutters, and meat trampled in the mire; food which, properly distributed, would have gladdened many a poor, hard-working family, too self-respecting to join that clamorous mob.
The two young men turned away sick and disgusted.
“Henry Hunt, in advocating the disuse of excisable liquors,” said Jabez, thoughtfully, “may only have designed to cripple the Government; but surely no one could witness scenes like these, whether Whig or Tory, without feeling that some restriction on drink is absolutely necessary for the safety of the State and the comfort of the people.”
“You are right, Mr. Clegg,” responded Travis, heartily. “Men of all politics ought to meet on this ground. I shall see how far my little influence goes to check intemperance henceforth. Something must be done, and that promptly.”
“Whatever I can do to second you, you may depend on, though beyond our own warehouse my opportunities are small,” said Jabez; “still, if I can influence one within our walls, that one may act on two outside, and so we may prevail in the end.”
“Yes,” added Travis, “and if this night be not eloquent in its protest against drink, all humanity must be equally debased and brutalised.”
Some caution had been necessary to cross the Market, so as to avoid insult, the captain’s bulk and uniform rendering him conspicuous, and his corps being in anything but good odour. They had kept well within the shade of the pillared piazza which extended along the side to their right, and, stunned bythe uproar of brawling and fighting crowds, picked their way between degraded humanity in heaps on the pavement, crushed hats and bonnets, torn caps and shawls, boots and shoes which had done duty as drinking vessels, sodden meat and bread, and had much ado to avoid splashing through puddles of ale and other abominations. They had emerged into Oak Street, glad to have got tolerably clear of the clamour and brutality, when a cry from the direction of Tib Street, “Watch! help! watch!” fell on their ears in tones which had a strangely familiar ring to Jabez.
Hastening on at a run, they came upon a decently-dressed man struggling against three or four drunken ruffians with heavy clogs on their feet. They had got the man down, and were vociferating with oaths not to be repeated here.
“Gi’e him a lick wi’ thi clog!” “Punce him well!” “Shut up his tater-trap fur him!” “Purr him i’ th’ bread-basket” “Fettle his mug wi’ thi clog!”
Before Jabez and his companion could prevent it, a heavy thud, followed by a groan, told of a brutal kick; the two only dashed among them in time to arrest the other clogs, already on the backward swing for force; and saved the prostrate man by turning the fury of the savages on themselves. The cowardly brutes, however, stood little chance against sobriety and skill, backed by the muscular frame of Jabez and the herculean one of Travis, even though they carried weapons of offence on their feet, and plied them vigorously; and before a droning watchman hove in sight to spring his rattle for assistance, they were overmastered or put to the rout.
Most thankful was Jabez for the impulse which had directed their steps that way when, on raising the fallen man, the light of an adjacent oil-lamp projecting from the wall fell on his blood-stained face, and revealed Tom Hulme, who had been drawn into that unusually disorderly neighbourhood by like curiosity with their own, and been set upon without provocation. He walked with pain, and they supported his steps to the Infirmary, not finding Mr. Huertley, on whom they called, at home. But so fertile had that evening been of serious injuries, he was some time before he could obtain attention. Thirteen far more urgent cases had preceded his. At length his head and cut lip were plaistered up, a reviving draught administered, and after some examination of bruises, and poking and pressing of his body, three of his ribs were pronounced “broken.” His defenders were disposed to smile at the surgeon when,besides an embrocation for bruises, he prescribed “a succession of oatmeal poultices applied internally”—in other words, a cushion of as much oatmeal porridge as the patient could consume, to press the crushed ribs gently into position.
It was, however, not much of a laughing matter to Tom Hulme, or to loving Bess, who looked aghast at this deplorable termination of a day’s jollity. Nor was there a trace of mirth on the face of Jabez when at parting with Ben Travis on the Mosley Street door-step, he gripped, more in pain than pleasure, the big hand extended so cordially.
It was after midnight, but from the open windows of the still-lighted drawing-room the thin quick ears of Jabez had caught the sound of Augusta’s melodious voice blending with that of Laurence Aspinall in a popular duet, although the notes of the latter were neither so clear nor so steady as they might have been. The pallor on her foster-son’s face Bess attributed to tender-hearted sympathy for her injured husband; but Jabez hurried away from her oppressive thanks to the solitude of his own chamber, where he could bury his face in his quivering hands, and unseen wrestle with emotions of which she had no conception.
Never had he known a day so chequered. The same sun which had looked down at noontide on the triumph of his amateur brush, had beamed on Augusta Ashton’s conscious cheeks, as she accepted his rival’s familiar act of gallantry without so much as a frown. The evening had made a man of him—lifted him into a new sphere—brought him, so to speak, nearer to his divinity, within the radius of her smiles, the music of her voice. She had put her small white hand within his, and blessed him with a word or two of shy recognition; but Laurence Aspinall had again come like a cloud between him and his sunbeam; her sweetest smiles, her softest tones, were for the intruder; her arm had rested willingly on his, her voice had blent with his in sentimental song, and darkness once more shut out hope from Jabez.
“Common sense might have taught me that my love was folly, presumption, madness!” he argued with himself; “that the heiress of a wealthy man would not stoop to her father’s Blue-coat apprentice. But oh!” he groaned, “I had hoped to raise myself step by step nearer to her level—to make myself worthy of her as a man, if I had not riches to lay at her feet. She is young, and what might I not accomplish with industry ere she came of age? but now——”
He tore his neckcloth off, and cast it from him, stripped off coat and vest, and flung them aside, as though they held his passionate folly, and he had done with it, then sank into a chair, the very impersonation of listless hopelessness. He had gone through all this struggle once before, and thought he had overcome his weakness; but at the touch of the enchanter’s wand love had blazed up afresh, and was not to be smothered.
His reverie was broken into by the tread of many feet on the staircase below, and the murmur of voices calling one to another; the hall-door shut with a clang, and then a light foot came tripping up the stair alone, and from heart and lips dropped unconsciously the soft refrain of that too well-known duet. She, too, was carrying to her chamber memories of the night, and bearing the burden blithely.
He listened until a door closed upon step and song. Then as if its echoes pierced his soul, he set his teeth and clenched his outstretched hands in mute agony. There was more than hopeless love in this—there was jealousy also. Then he murmured half audibly, “If he were only worthy of her I could bear it better; but to see her cast her heart at the feet of one who will trample on it, is beyond mortal endurance.”
He started to his feet. A bright thought irradiated his face.
“Coward that I am! I am quitting the battle without striking a blow. I am myself unworthy of Augusta if I surrender her to a heartless profligate without an effort to save her. ‘Faint heart never won fair lady.’ Women have stooped lower, and lowly men have looked higher ere now. I am making way, but I must make money too, if I would look above me. Father and mother look on me with favour, and why not the daughter? She may learn the worthlessness of the fine gentleman in time. Courage, Jabez! Work with a will; do your duty. Miss no opportunity, and the gold and the goddess may both be yours in the end, and honestly won.”
He sprang into bed fresher and lighter than he had been all day, the prayer of that other Jabez rising from his heart with the fervour of old times.