The Manchester Man

by Mrs. G. Linnaeus Banks

Mrs. Ashton had heard Augusta’s frantic appeal to Jabez at at the pond, had seen him stagger and turn livid as if shot, noted the inward struggle ere he said, “I will;” but she had ascribed it to old and unforgiven injuries, and thinking it hard that he should be called upon to hazard his life for his known enemy with chances so heavy against him, had herself forbidden the attempt. This was all the solution she had to offer Mr. Aspinall. In the excitement of the accident and the rescue, she had overlooked Augusta’s excessive emotion, but now her mother’s heart took alarm. Could it be that the younger eyes of Jabez had seen a preference for the handsome scapegrace which she had not?

The matter was talked over by husband and wife long after Mr. Aspinall had left; and the anxious mother questioned the maiden in the privacy of her own room, to come thence with the sad conviction that Augusta had prematurely been led captive by a handsome face and a dashing air, irrespective of worth or worthlessness. Yet she consoled herself and Mr. Ashton with the reflection. “It is, after all, only a girlish fancy, and will die out.”

“Just so, and as the young rake is laid by the leg for one while, there is all the more chance,” assented Mr. Ashton.

“If his immersion does not convert him into a hero,” added the matron, with a clearer knowledge of her daughter. Yet neither asked themselves how the intuitive perception of Jabez came to be more acute than their own, nor what power impelled him to risk his life for an enemy at the mere bidding of Augusta. Indeed, they set the hazardous exploit down to the score of magnanimity and bravery only.

Equally unobservant were they of Ellen Chadwick’s remonstrance, or her feverish watch of every perilous turn Jabez and Nelson had taken on the ice, or of the caresses she lavished on the dog when all was over. Only Mrs. Chadwick had seen that, as she had seen fainter signs years before; but she held her peace, and, having a leaven of her sister’s pride, “hoped she was mistaken.”

There were three young hearts consumed by the same passion—that which lies at the root of the happiness or misery of the world,—one nursing the romance, two fighting against its hopelessness in silence and concealment; but “the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.”

Jabez Clegg could not tell when he had not loved Augusta Ashton, from the time when she was young enough to play about the ware-rooms, or to be lifted across the muddy roadways in his strong apprentice arms, when it was his pleasant duty to protect her to and from school. But he could trace back the time when Hogarth’s prints gave to that love a definite shape, and he began to look upon his master’s daughter as a prize to be attained. All things had tended to confirm his belief in its possibility, and love and ambition had gone hand in hand, and fed each other. The child had come to him for companionship and entertainment, the girl under his protection had confided to him her school-day troubles, and come to him for help in difficulties, with lessons on slate or book. She had looked up to him, trusted him, clung to him; and though she was as a star in his firmament, he had had a sort of vague impression that the star which shone upon him from afar would draw nearer, and, as he rose to it, come down to meet him.

His first sharp awakening was her reminder that the pair of intoxicated officers who had insulted her in the theatre were “gentlemen,” and so not to be chastised by him. His second—and then jealousy added a sting—was meeting Aspinall face to face in the hall, when the latter smilingly bowed himself out on his first visit. And now he brooded in despair over the final dissipation of his dream beneath the icicle-hung boughs on Ardwick Green; for the first time conscious that she belonged to another sphere.

Never by look or word had he done himself, or her, or her parents, the dishonour of giving expression to his ambitious love; and now another had looked on his divinity, and won her for himself. It came upon him like a flash when that white-faced agony, that piteous cry, called him to imperil his own life—worthless in the scale against another, and that other. It came upon him with a flash that scathed like lightning. He had forgiven the boy Aspinall long ago; and the man—well, Augusta’s happiness demanded the sacrifice, and he had made it. Out of his very love for Augusta he had saved the rival’s life she had prayed for. And he had been offered money for the act which wrecked his own life. Thank God he had rejected it with scorn!