“If you think so, Miss Ashton,” he replied, respectfully, “I will hasten back as soon as I have seen you safely home, and bear your apologies to Madame Broadbent. She may not have left the theatre. Besides, I feel that I also owe an apology for leaving a lady of her age unprotected in the midst of such a scene. It was very remiss on my part,” he added; “but, indeed, at the time I thought only of placing you beyond reach of further insult;” and Augusta could hear him mutter between his teeth, “The impertinent puppy!”
The distance even from Fountain Street was very inconsiderable, and they had reached the broad steps of the door in Mosley Street, and his hand was on the lion-headed knocker when this ejaculation escaped him.
Service from Jabez was so much a matter of course that Augusta regarded his care for herself, and his proffer to run back at her bidding, only in the light of apprentice-duty; but that muttered exclamation spoke of smothered passion; and before James was roused from his doze in front of the far-away kitchen fire by that peal on the knocker, and sleepily opened the door, she had added a caution as an addendum to her message to Madame Broadbent.
“I hope, Jabez, you are not going back to—to interfere or quarrel with Mr. Walmsley and the other officer. If they are not quite sober, you must remember they are gentlemen.”
“I will forget nothing I should remember, Miss Ashton,” said he, as James unclosed the door for her entrance, and he darted off, the emphasis she had laid on her closing words having stung him keenly with a sense of his social inferiority in her sight. “She evidently thinks the apprentice College-boy has no right to raise his hand against gentility in uniform, however drunk or disorderly it may be,” he thought, as he ran along, spurred by a manly desire to show that it was not cowardice which had caused him to leave his prostrate enemy in the hands of a deputy.
He was not three minutes more in reaching the box-entrance in Back Mosley Street; but for all that, the short walk home, and the brief delay caused by sleepy-headed James, had given ample time to empty and close the theatre, from which more than half the audience had dispersed before they left. Even the oil lamps over the doors were extinguished; and though a few stragglers loitered about—the natural hangers-on to histrionic skirts—and there were brawlers in the neighbourhood, he saw none of those he went to seek.
The fact was, Captain Travis had hauled Lieutenant Aspinall from the ground with little ceremony, and, with a sharp reproof for “the disgrace he was bringing on their corps by insulting a young lady in a public place, as if sufficient odium did not attach to the Yeomanry already,” forced him into a waiting hackney-coach, giving the driver orders to bear him home to his father’s house on Ardwick Green, heedless of the young officer’s remonstrance to the contrary. But Jehu, who knew his fare, drove him instead to the “George and Dragon” on the opposite side of the Green, and Mr. Aspinall saw nothing of his hopeful son that night.
Nor would Charlotte Walmsley have seen much more of her husband, had not kind-hearted Ben gone far out of his own way to land John safely at home. Perhaps it would be hardly fair to calculate too nicely how far he was influenced to that by the relation of the Walmsleys to Ellen Chadwick, since the secret springs of action often lie too far down even for self-knowledge.
As for Madame Broadbent, no sooner had Miss Nuttall disposed of the last of the budding misses than she hid her indignation in the deep shadow of her large calesh, and, with an access of importance, left the theatre, slightly in advance of her humble dependants, and made her fearless way through Fountain Street and High street, with a step which augured unpleasantness for all beneath her roof if her supper were not done to a turn and served to a nicety.