JABEZ, bottles in hand, his mind a chaos, had walked in at the wash-kitchen door precisely as Augusta, stealthily creeping through a gap in the privet-hedge, made her way to the convenient staircase-window, shivering more from fright than from the chill drizzling rain which had begun to fall. Putting her head in at the parlour-door where Ellen was sewing, with a brief “I’m off to bed,” she hurried upstairs in the dusk to lave her flushed face, smooth her disordered hair, crush it under a night-cap, and place her head on a pillow, to still her heart’s flutterings under the screening counterpane, and hide her emotions from her cousin under the semblance of sleep, though sleep was an absolute impossibility.
In 1821 the village of Gretna Green, on the Scottish border, was the general resort of runaway lovers, who, being in their minority, could not be married legally in England without parental consent, whereas in Caledonia a mere promise to marry made in the presence of witnesses was held binding. At Gretna a man not in holy orders, but metaphorically called “the blacksmith,” because he riveted the chains of matrimony, lived in the first house beyond the bridge which spanned the river Sark, and, with a ceremonial as unseemly as it was brief, married all comers, often with pursuers at his very doors; and the marriages so contracted were not to be set aside. For more than half a century Gretna Green weddings had figured largely in the literature of the stage and of the circulating library; and there is no doubt that the halo of romance thrown around an elopement to Gretna blinded to the impropriety of the prenuptial flight many a foolish or headstrong girl whom the actual ceremony shocked and startled.
Augusta Ashton, with all her sentimental romance, all her petulant wilfulness, all her resentment at being exiled from home and her Adonis, yet loved her parents well, although her reverence and filial obedience had been gradually undermined by the plausible sophistry and impassioned eloquence of her ardent lover. But if she loved them much, she, unfortunately, loved Laurence more. He was, to do him justice, terribly in earnest; and in the inexperience of her seventeen years she could not be expected to sift and analyse that passionate earnestness for its many components. With her all was love, and love was all.
His proposition had, nevertheless, come upon her with a shock. She was not prepared to ignore the prudent teaching of her mother, or to brave the indignation of her indulgent father, or to forfeit her own self-respect, and nothing could have moved her to consent but that appalling threat of suicide, and he knew her tender heart well when he made it.
But neither that threat nor her promise could reconcile her to the rash step, and she lay in bed shuddering with her own fears, and strangely enough her first thought was—“What would Jabez say if he knew it?” Not her father, not her mother, but the Jabez whom she had rebuffed only a week before, yet of whose opinion she somehow stood more in awe than of all else besides.
What did Jabez think, seeing that he did know? Think? He scarcely could think. Feeling seemed to overpower thought, reason, perception. When after a stagnant time he emerged from the stair-head, it was more as a culprit than Jabez Clegg. He put down the bottles and escaped again into the open air, cowed alike by the knowledge which had overpowered him, and by a sense of dishonour at having played the unworthy part of a listener, albeit the listening had been involuntary, seeing that the shock of his discovery had stunned him like a blow from a sledge-hammer, crushing his own long-cherished hopes to death. His next thought was of intense thankfulness that by any means the schemes of Aspinall had been bared to him, and in time to attempt the rescue of his idolised Augusta from the clutches of a villain.
Unacquainted with the events which had preceded Augusta’s removal to Carr—unaware that the Mosley Street doors had been closed against Laurence, or that a formal proposal for the young lady’s hand had been made by the elder Aspinall on behalf of his son, and peremptorily declined by the Ashtons; ignorant that imperious Mr. Aspinall, in his gouty wrath, had sworn “upon his honour” that his son should “marry the girl in spite of the paltry beggar’s-inkle-weaver,” and having no faith in the man himself, Jabez regarded the use of the father’s name only as a proof of his greater perfidy, and gave him no credit even for an honourable intention or an honest emotion. The time was past for Clegg to find excuses for the wrong-doing of his adversary.
Now, with every nerve unstrung, he was required to act, and that promptly. To-morrow would be too late. What if he should take Miss Chadwick into his confidence? But no, he could not lower Augusta in the eyes even of her own cousin and neither she nor anyone there had authority to detain Miss Ashton against her will even if her foot were on the step of the post-chaise. It was imperative that he should reach Manchester immediately, yet how to do so without exciting alarm perplexed him. There was a horse in the stable at the mill, but as he had a bed in Simon’s room, and could neither leave it nor return to it in the night without passing through the Hulmes’ sleeping apartment, there was a difficulty in quitting the house unknown.
“I must be at the mill before daybreak to-morrow having something of importance to attend to, so I will sleep on the squab in the house-place, Mrs. Hulme, and if I am not in for breakfast, do not wait for me,” said he; and no one questioned him, although Mrs. Hulme and her husband were of joint opinion that “Jabez looked terribly put eawt,” and wondered what business he could have on hand of so much consequence.
No one thought of locking country cottage doors. By nine o’clock all the inmates were in bed and asleep. Before ten Jabez, sad at heart, had quietly left the cottage for the mill, had saddled Peveril, and, though no great horseman, was speeding past the “White Hart” along the highway to Manchester, fast as the steady-going roadster would travel. The wind had risen, and the rain came down persistently; but heedless of discomfort or danger, with the one thought paramount in his mind—the preservation of his master’s daughter—he set his teeth and rode on with a feverish impatience, which at length communicated itself to Peveril, and quickened the beat of the sensible animal’s hoof; impatience which would have sent him flying over the toll-gates, had either he or his steed been equal to the exploit, and which could barely brook the delay of drowsy toll-keepers.
Nevertheless as he turned from Piccadilly into Mosley Street, the muffled-up old watchman, catching the echoes of the Infirmary clock, bawled out, to mark his own vigilance, “Just one o’clock, an’ a dark rainy neet!” and the Ashton household had closed its eyelids, and its account with the day, at least a couple of hours.
It is never pleasant to be the bearer of ill-tidings, so no wonder Jabez hesitated with the lion-headed knocker in his hand ere he sent its reverberations growling through the silent house. His hesitation must have influenced the knocker, for the lion had to roar again, and louder, before he heard the window above unclose, and saw Mr. Ashton’s night-capped head thrust out, to ask, in alarm, “Who’s there? What’s the matter?”
Jabez stepped back to the kerbstone to let the dull rays of an oil lamp fall upon his face.
“It is I, Jabez Clegg, sir; I have a matter of importance to communicate.”
“Good heavens, Clegg, you! Surely the mill’s not been burned down?”
“No, sir, all’s right at the factory. There’s no harm done anywhere at present. If you will please to come down, I hope there may be time to prevent that which is threatened.”
“Just so, I’ll be down directly.”
There were no lucifer-matches with which to procure instantaneous light, but during this brief colloquy, Mrs. Ashton had been groping on the tall chimney-piece for their precursors the Prometheans, and having found them, by dipping a small chemically prepared match into a tiny bottle of fluid, she obtained a light as soon as the window was closed and the draught shut out.
Too uneasy to waste much time in dressing, before many minutes had flown, Mr. and Mrs. Ashton, whose fears had equally pointed to their daughter—the one in a roquelaire, and the other in her warehouse overall—were both listening with agitated and anxious faces to Mr. Clegg’s communication, made with a discomposure great as their own.
“Elope!” both parents exclaimed, simultaneously.
“Elope!” reiterated the mother! “our daughter consent to elope, and with a reprobate like him? It is not possible!”
“So I should have said, madam, yesterday,” rejoined Jabez, sadly, as he sank on a chair, overpowered more by the strain on his feelings than by the fatigue of his long, wet, midnight ride; “and I would have given the world to have been able to doubt the evidence of my own ears.”
Mrs. Ashton, with clasped hands up, sat opposite to Jabez; Mr. Ashton, lacking the consolation and inspiration of his snuff-box, walked about the room with one hand to his head in a state of distressing perturbation. He stopped in his walk to ask, “What’s to be done?” as Jabez made this declaration, unconscious of its force.
The light of the chamber candle fell upon the haggard face and drenched garments of the young man. The elder one looked full at him, paused, then drawing near and laying his right hand heavily on the other’s wet shoulder, asked in a troubled voice, with an inquisitorial but not unkind manner—
“My lad, did no other motive than duty to your employers bring you eighteen miles through the rain this dark night to save Miss Ashton from an imprudent marriage?”
Jabez had not stopped to analyse his own motives. Thus questioned, it was not without embarrassment that he answered, “Mrs. Ashton desired me, sir, to watch over Miss Ashton, and acquaint you with any matter affecting her welfare. But apart from that, sir, I could not see Miss Ashton in the toils of a libertine without an attempt to rescue her. I should have been a dastard to sit passive; and even now I feel we are losing time.”
“Just so, just so,” assented Mr. Ashton. “That reminds me, Peveril is in the street, and you are soaked to the skin. My dear”—turning to his wife—“will you arouse the servants, and see that neither horse nor rider suffers in our service more than we can help.”
Having thus got rid of his wife, of whom he stood somewhat in awe, he resumed his searching catechism of Jabez.
“And so, Clegg, you have no motive beyond a chivalrous desire to save your master’s daughter, no interest to serve beyond your duty to us?”
The ordeal was terrible. Jabez rose, his features working convulsively.
“Mr. Ashton, you are torturing me. Humble as I am, I love Miss Ashton with my whole life and soul. But knowing the distance between us, I have striven to keep the secret in my own breast. And I protest I had no double motive in my journey hither.”
The genial small-ware manufacturer, to whom that night had brought two revelations, looked Jabez steadfastly in the face as he made his avowal; then, taking him kindly by the hand, said—his eyes swimming—
“Just so, just so, my lad! I believe you. And, Jabez Clegg, let me tell you that I would rather give my daughter to an upright, persevering man like you, without a penny, than to a spendthrift like Laurence Aspinall, though he rolled in riches. But it’s no use saying that now.”
Indeed there was no use, and time was flying. A glance of grateful attachment, and a mute pressure of his liberal master’s hand, were the sole acknowledgment of Jabez. But a new bond was established between the twain.
Mrs. Ashton had come back to discuss with her husband and Jabez the best mode of procedure. She was not less shrewd than her lord, and had not failed to perceive that the young man’s heart was in the service he now rendered them. The blow dealt by Augusta to her pride dashed down the impalpable barrier between them, and she took counsel with him as a tried and true friend.
Mr. Clegg pointed out the necessity for his return to the mill before it should open, and he be missed; and taking a proffered glass of brandy and water to avert cold, he hurried, whilst hot coffee was preparing, to change his soaked garments preparatory to the ride back; his elders also taking the opportunity to dress and prepare for departure with the morning coach.
Not a moment was wasted, but though Peveril had been well groomed and fed, he was not so fresh to the road as he had been; still the journey was homeward, the rain had abated; day began to dawn as he left Stockport behind, and without much use of the whip, Jabez had his horse back in the stable before the factory bell began to ring. And then the beast was allowed to rest. The jaded man had to rouse himself to another day’s work, another day’s trial and excitement, without a moment for repose.
To everybody’s astonishment, Mr. and Mrs. Ashton stepped out of the “Lord Nelson” coach that morning at the bottom of the avenue, with a carpet-bag for luggage. The difference of their reception by daughter and niece was palpable, and they could not fail to observe how much the former was disconcerted by their arrival.
“Oh, aunt and uncle, this is a pleasant surprise!” exclaimed Ellen, running down the avenue to meet them.
“You do not appear very well pleased to see us, Augusta,” remarked Mrs. Ashton, as she met her lazily sauntering through the garden towards them, as captivating in her printed morning dress as a sleepless night, an anxious headache, and her unmistakable confusion would permit the recognised beauty to be.
“Oh, yes, I am pleased enough, but I should have been better pleased if you had written instead of coming upon one so suddenly. It is quite startling!” and the petulance of her tone gave effect to the pettish frown on her brow.
“My dear, ill thoughts make ill looks,” said Mrs. Ashton, gravely, with a searching glance. “What is the matter with you this morning? Nothing serious, I hope.”
The very inquiry apparently annoyed her.
“Oh, I’ve got a headache, that’s all. I heard a man’s foot on the gravel-walk long after everyone was in bed, and I got a fright.”
“I think it was only Crazy Joe—he hangs about at all hours,” put in Ellen, who had not heard the crunch of Mr. Clegg’s heel on the gravel, as he stood for a moment under their window, to breathe a prayer for the safety and well-being of the supposed sleeper, before he turned away swiftly on his errand.
Almost Mr. Ashton’s first inquiry was for Mr. Clegg.
“He’s at the mill, sir. He was off afore any on us was up; an’ he said happen he mightna git whome fur breakfast, he wur so busy,” was the reply of Bess.
But Mr. Ashton, setting off towards the factory, encountered Jabez on the way, and they returned together to breakfast, as if they had met for the first time that morning. On Mrs. Ashton’s suggestion, Augusta was neither questioned nor accused.
“We should only tempt her to deny, and perhaps provoke ill-will towards our informant, with no good end,” she said. “Better wait and ascertain beyond question what her intentions are.”
Jabez would fain have spared her the pain and shame of exposure, but the matter was out of his hands.
The day passed unmarked save by Augusta’s restless lookout for Crazy Joe, and the way she hung about her mother, as if half afraid of the rash step she contemplated.
Mr. Ashton meanwhile, to cover his distress and agitation, busied himself about the transfer of the White Hart (which he pronounced “admirable”) to its place over the inn-door, and managed to elicit from Chapman, the gossiping landlord, without direct inquiry, that a fine young spark in hunting gear had put up his horse there several times within the past week, and was like to make the fortune of Crazy Joe, he gave the poor softy so many half-crowns; but Joe was “deep, and never let on what he got them for.”