YEARS went by—Laurence had promised to remove Sarah Mostyn, but the woman laughed, refused to stir, and he let her remain—a thorn in his wife’s side—training up the boy she had nursed, and whom he idolised, to scorn and jeer at his own mother; whilst her red-haired girl ran wild about the place as a young hare. He broke out from time to time, and his wife was the sufferer; he horse-whipped her, shot at her, and tortured her in every way that malignity could devise.
No wonder that so many tiny coffins of immature babes should be carried from the gates of the Fallowfield Grange. No wonder if Augusta began to compare her lot with Ellen’s, and to repent her scorn of a true heart because of its plebeian origin.
Meanwhile, the firm of Ashton, Chadwick, and Clegg prospered beyond expectation, the business tact and integrity of the junior partner alike aiding the extension and stability of the firm. To make way for its expansion more warehouse room was required. The Ashtons, not without a sigh for old association, relinquished their house, and removed to another close at hand in George Street, little less commodious, however much Kezia might grumble at it. This was when Ben Travis, lacking employment for time, mind, and money, offered them to the growing establishment, and his influence as “Co.” was accepted. This combination of capital and energy, as Jabez had foreseen, worked wonders for them commercially, enabling them to tide over the trade distress of 1826 with security and advantage. Long before then Jabez had offered to pay Mrs. Clowes her loan, with interest; but she told him she was going to render up her account where, not the coin she had, but that which she had given away, would be put to her credit; and so, as at first proposed, she made it over to her little god-son, Joshua Clegg, before she was gathered to the great garner.
But the universal mower reaped a heavier harvest in 1828, when he swept his keen scythe over the bed of the river.
In 1822 Mr. Ashton (one of the first promoters of the Chamber of Commerce), notwithstanding his advancing years, took an active part in the formation of a New Quay Company, for the better navigation of the river Irwell. The company was established, quays were constructed, warehouses erected, boats built, traffic was extended, and the town generally benefited.
In the February of 1828 the axe, the adze, and the hammer made a busy noise in the boat-building yard of the company, and sail-makers were active with their needles; for a flat, destined to convey cargoes of merchandise to and from Liverpool, was to be ready for the launch on the 26th, a day destined to send a thrill of horror tingling through the veins of Manchester, so sad was the catastrophe it closed upon.
The launch of the Emma was an event in the annals of the company, and of the town; consequently a large number of spectators assembled, a goodly proportion being admitted to the yard to take part in the ceremony, and go with the flat on her trial trip under Captain Gaudy.
Mrs. Ashton, saying, “that when the cat’s away the mice will play,” had decided on remaining at home to watch the mice, but Mr. Ashton compensated himself by taking Ellen and her two eldest boys, leaving baby with its grandma; Jabez, detained by business in the counting-house, promising to overtake them before they were on board. Mr. Aspinall, too, was there, and on his arm was his son’s wife, and Laurence, with his boy Willie, close beside them. He was too jealous of the admiration she excited, to permit her to go into company, even with his father, unless he had also his own eye upon her, especially where there was a chance of meeting Jabez Clegg. He brought the boy for a treat.
It was quite a gala-day, and as the pleasant company mounted the deck, peered into the cabin, and chatted gaily to one another, they little thought to how many that would be a launch into eternity.
The boat, a large flat, fully rigged, painted white above the water-line, and black below, with sails set and flags flying, rested in well-greased cradles, her head down; the shipwrights stood ready with their daggers; painters with their cans and brushes to dab her sides as she slid past them; a band upon the quay played lively tunes, and (fatal mischance) the people on deck flocked to one side to listen. The sponsor, a Miss Grimes, with her sister and our friends, advanced to the bows The word was given; the ready daggers struck away the shores; the boat began to move; Miss Grimes caught firmly the bottle (suspended by a ribbon), and shattered it upon the vessel, proclaiming, with that baptism of wine, the boat was henceforth the Emma. Hurrahs and exclamations followed. The bows touched the water, which first splashed the faces, then lifted from their feet the christeners and the Ashton party. The flat had dipped too deeply, it heeled over on her crowded side, and sank with her living cargo clinging and fettering each other in the swirling waters, whilst shrieking spectators looked on helpless from bridge and bank, watching others braver and bolder, or better skilled, rush to the rescue to their own risk.
Who shall picture the horror and confusion of that moment, when some scores of holiday people—men, women, children—were precipitated at one fell swoop into the water, shrieking and clinging to one another with that tenacity of grip proverbial with the drowning?
The bridge, the Old Quay, the open space in front of the New Bailey Prison—railed off at an elevation far above the stream—the steep steps, and the towing-path beneath, were all lined with spectators, though the fatal launch was made from a yard lower down the river on the Manchester side. (The New Bailey is in Salford).
As the vessel struck the ground, shuddering from stem to stern, before turning over on her side, and the final catastrophe was imminent, Laurence (sober for once) snatched his darling boy up in his arms, whispered a hasty word of instruction and confidence, and, regardless of aught besides, sprang with him into the water in the contrary direction, far as possible beyond the eddy and suction, and keeping clear of the struggling wretches who were pulling each other down, swam with him to the towing-path. But not until he had placed Willie under safe charge, beyond danger from the scurrying throng, did he hasten back to attempt the rescue of wife or father; and then neither was to be seen.
Mr. Aspinall had been an able swimmer in his day, and made a bold effort for self-preservation; but cramp seizing his gouty limbs, he was one of the first to disappear and perish, though boats and swimmers had put out to the general rescue.
It was vain to search for individuals; though well was his son’s prowess tested that day; more than one drowning wretch he clutched from behind by clothes or hair, and urged forward to the bank, where the Humane Society’s men, with ropes and grapnels, were ably seconded by volunteer humanity, and strong hands were outstretched to haul the helpless up.
Ben Travis had waited for Jabez, detained in the warehouse by courtesy to Mr. Gregson, the buyer for Messrs. Leaf of London, and the two, hurrying to make up for lost time, only reached the New Quay with Nelson at their heels as the hurrahs died out in appalling screams, and the waters of the Irwell closed over all the twain held dearest in life.
With the celerity of light, coats were doffed and shoes cast off, and the two leaped from the stone quay in hope and dread, but the good dog was before them, its teeth in a child’s coat, swimming to the shore. Almost as Jabez touched the water, a sinking woman clutched his legs. With a plunge he freed himself, then catching at her long hair, towed her behind him to the side, and swam back to seek: and save his own wife and little ones, if that were possible.
A floating scarf, a mass of matchless brown curls, a hand and arm above the water, and Jabez knew that Augusta Aspinall was sinking there before him. A few strokes brought him to the spot; he dived; a youth was clinging to her shirts, and held her down. One or both must have drowned. With a blow which went to his heart, he freed her, and, catching her beneath the armpit, held her well from him as he made for shore. To the Humane Society’s men he yielded her—so far gone, the men shook their heads over the lovely woman, as though she were beyond help. But they bore the dripping lady to the sail-room close at hand, whilst Jabez, taking the precaution to secure a rope to his waist, plunged boldly into the midst of the entangled mass in quest of his own.
It was a vain search; he brought one strange child, and then another to bank, and then a man; but he was again laid hold of when his strength was exhausted; and only for the precautionary rope, he would have given to the greedy river the life Simon Clegg had saved from it.
Travis had the good fortune to rescue Mr. Ashton, but he had been some time in the water, and the old man was far spent; but there was no trace of Ellen or her boys, even though he dived close by the sunken flat, and brought up lifeless bodies in their stead.
Jabez and he could only hope some other of the brave men, putting their own lives in peril, had saved them.
The governor of the gaol had opened his house doors, the recovered dead were carried into the gaol itself, the sail-maker’s room was crowded, every tavern near was filled, but no trace was found of Ellen or their sons, and Jabez was like one distraught.
He was but one agitated atom in that seething, surging, frantic crowd, where women shrieked for their husbands, parents for their children, children for their parents; where passing strangers threw themselves into the water to save life, and lost their own; where ignorance lifted the hapless by the heels “to pour the water out” and extinguished the last spark of vitality; and where yelping dogs astray were caught and slaughtered, that medical skill might transfuse the warm blood of the lesser animal into the veins of the human, as a last resource to restore suspended animation. Even gallant old Nelson narrowly escaped falling a sacrifice to the surgeons.
Jabez entered the room where Augusta Ashton was lying, to all appearance, dead—ordinary means of resuscitation having failed; and a surgeon was about so to operate on her from a bleeding spaniel on the ground. Jabez shrank with a strange loathing; in an instant bared his arm to the doctor’s lancet; and if he did not give his life to serve her, as he had once said, he gave his life’s blood to save her; and as the warm fluid passed from his quick veins to hers, he saw the blue quivering lids tremble, light pass into the brown eyes, breath part the blue lips once more; and from the depths of his anguished heart he thanked God as a faint “Jabez” indicated recognition as well as returning animation.
He had restored a wife to thankless Aspinall; but who should restore to him the darling boys who had crept about his knees and round his heart, and the good wife who had won a place there, in spite of fate, by her own patient, but intense, love?
The Emma was raised and floated, so little damaged that she was speedily ready for use, and continued so for many years. In her cabin were found the remains of Ellen and her sons, where the childish curiosity of the elder one had doubtless led all three; but they were raised from the water only to be committed to the earth, and covered up out of sight and hearing for evermore; and never did Jabez know fully all she had become to him until he stood with Travis by the side of an open grave, and heard the clods rattle on the coffin-lid. She was all as one then to the man who had worshipped her, and the man she had worshipped; and though the babe she had left behind was nearer to the one, it would be hard to say to which little Nelly was the dearest in the aftertime.
Including the bodies found beneath the flat and those laid out in the gaol and elsewhere for inquest, thirty-three lives were sacrificed on the altar of the Emma; and of these must be reckoned the brave men who cast their lives away to rescue others.
Among the early saved were the Captain, Miss Grimes, and her sister, the two latter being hastily conveyed home in a private carriage (mayhap Mr. Aspinall’s), with coats and cloaks wrapped around their saturated garments.
Good, kind, genial Mr. Ashton never recovered from the effects of his long immersion. He was a man far advanced in years, and the shock was too much for him. He hobbled about the warehouse, snuff-box in hand, a few months, and then dropped asleep in his easy-chair after a game of cribbage with Jabez—never to wake again.
And then the excitement and agitation consequent on the loss of his dear Ellen and her romping boys having brought on Mr. Chadwick a fresh attack of paralysis, which left him still more helpless (though he survived many years to pet and spoil Ellen’s baby-girl), Mrs. Ashton, lonely in her large house, proposed that her sister’s family (Jabez included) should join her in George Street; but when she would have said “the more the merrier,” the words died on her lips. Who were they but the survivors of two wrecked households?
After a little hesitation the offer was accepted, and the whole family gathered in their shorn proportions under one roof. But there was another proposition from another quarter, to which there was considerably more demur. Mrs. Hulme, in a warm grey-duffel cloak, for the preservation of her new mourning, travelled from Whaley-Bridge, to ask as a favour that baby Nelly should be committed to her care.
“You see, Mrs. Chaddick, th’ poor little babby’ll thrive better yond than here i’ th’ smooak; an’ aw’d fain do summat for Mester Clegg, he have done so much fur feyther an——.”
Jabez interrupted her.
“Hush! Mrs. Hulme. I owe life and all that life has given to your father and yourself. What little I have done in return has been but dust in the balance. Yet as it is your desire, and I know baby would be best in your hands, if grandmother will consent to part with her, Nelly and her nurse shall go back with you for the coming summer months.”
And so, though parting with Ellen’s baby seemed parting with Ellen over again, the little blossom went away to other blossoms on the healthy hill-side.
Tom Hulme was no longer overlooker, but responsible manager at the Whaley-Bridge Mill, with a good salary; and if Jabez gratefully traced his fortune back to his cradle, so too did they trace their amended position to the same source. But Bess more immediately referred to the benefit Simon Clegg had derived from the Buxton Baths, whither Jabez had sent him year after year, for the relief of his rheumatism, and to his care of steadfast little Sim. He had first placed the crippled lad with a doctor celebrated for his treatment of bodily deformities, under whom the boy’s bent body had strengthened and straightened considerably, and then removed him for education to the house of a married clergyman, where there were no rough boys to torment him. Jabez knew well what were the amenities of public schools.