He had gone on talking, though hardly anyone had listened to him. Ellen’s fainting fit engrossed feminine attention, and the yeoman, seeing her revive, was saying to Mr. Chadwick, “You will excuse me now, sir. I must look after our poor friend Jabez.”
“Eh what! Jabez? You don’t mean to say anything has happened to Jabez Clegg?” exclaimed Mr. Ashton, pausing in the act of drawing forth his snuff-box.
Travis was gone, but Mr. Chadwick, whose tongue now was none of the readiest, stammered out—
“Yes, William, w-we le-ft him at Mab-bott the confectioner’s. In try-ying to-o save me he got b-badly w-wounded. I’m v-very s-sorry, for he is a n-noble y-young man.”
“The wretches! I’d almost as soon they’d wounded me! Stay here, Augusta;” and with that Mr. Ashton was off after Ben Travis. The main streets were unsafe, so he also took the back way, and across Back-Piccadilly to Mr. Mabbott’s, with a celerity scarcely to have been expected, for he was not a young man. But his apprentice had won upon him not only by his integrity and business qualifications, but by his manifest interest in the family he served, especially the daughter. Let me not be misunderstood. Augusta was the cynosure of Mr. Ashton’s eyes; the homage of the apprentice to the school-girl, he estimated as the homage of an apprentice merely, and was gratified thereby, but his imagination never travelled beyond.
He found Jabez on a chintz-covered couch in Mr. Mabbott’s sitting-room, his arm bound tightly with a towel, through which the blood would force its way. He was pale and exhausted from excessive hæmorrhage, but seemed more concerned about the fate of the multitude outside than for his own.
Ben Travis, discovering that no one had dared to venture in quest of a doctor, threw himself across his horse, which he found where he had left it, and was off up Mosley Street and thence back to Piccadilly, intent on bringing either Dr. Hull or Dr. Hardie. His uniform was a protection, and so the doctors told him; Dr. Hardie plainly saying that black cloth was not plate-armour, and that his friend, whosoever he might be, must wait until the tumult had somewhat subsided.
But Jabez was only a few hours without attention. There were hundreds wounded that day, who had to skulk into holes and corners to hide themselves and their agony as best they might, afraid of seeking surgical aid, lest Nadin and his myrmidons should pounce upon them, and haul them to prison as rebels.