MISFORTUNE binds closer than prosperity. The calamity which tied Laurence Aspinall down in a strait-waistcoat to a bed of fever, with shaven head and sightless eyes, touched the Ashtons in a tender point. Themselves the parents of an only child, the very crown and glory of their lives, their sympathies went forth to Mr. Aspinall, in spite of his haughty assumption. Indeed, distress brought him down to the common level of humanity; and having neither sister, aunt, nor cousin to undertake the care of his sick son for love, and not for fee, he learned the comparative powerlessness of wealth, and hailed with all the gratitude in his nature the occasional visits of Mrs. Ashton, in whose stately bearing, no doubt, he recognised a sort of kinship.
It was, however, not Mrs. Ashton the business woman, not Mrs. Ashton the lofty lady, but Mrs. Ashton the mother who laid her cool hand on the young man’s fevered forehead, questioned the nurses, made suggestions for the benefit of the invalid, and by means of a “Ladies’ Free Registry” in Chapel Walk, found a staid woman of experience to act as housekeeper, and bring the disorganised household into order without treading on the toes of attached but incapable Kitty.
The head of Antinous shorn of its glorious locks, swathed in lotion-cloths, tossing in delirium, would scarcely appear so attractive as to fill the most timid mother with fears for a romantic daughter’s heart, and so whilst sympathy was awake vigilance slumbered. Yet never need vigilance have been more awake. She saw him as he was—Augusta, as he had been. Through other channels than the maternal she heard of his condition from day to day, and how in his delirium he had mixed up her name with the slang of the cock-pit, the race-course, and the prize-ring; but with strange infatuation she ignored all that should have warned, and clung to all that was pleasant to her own self-love. Never had she been so assiduous in her visits to her aunt Chadwick and her cousin Walmsley; and her smiling “I’ve brought my work and come to sit with you this afternoon,” should have been translated, “I hope John or Mr. Travis will drop in. They are sure to have something to say about Mr. Laurence; it is so dreadful not to know how he is going on.”
And pretty generally her calculations were correct; the two gentlemen were interested in Aspinall as a member of their yeomanry corps, apart from private friendship, and were constant in their inquiries, even finding their way to his bed-side; and Mr. Benjamin Travis, who could not very well every day manage to meet Mr. Chadwick accidentally on his way from the warehouse, and lend his stout arm as a support, appeared only too glad to be the bearer of bulletins from Ardwick, as an excuse for calling in Oldham Street and hovering about the chair or the window where Ellen Chadwick sat at her sewing or knitting, and grew silent on his entrance, blushing when she heard his footstep or his voice in the hall, from motives sadly misinterpreted.
There was no mistaking the true purport of his frequent visits and assiduous attention to the crippled old gentleman; so Augusta having settled in her own mind that Ellen was either too reserved or too shy to give her big, good-natured but timid lover proper encouragement, took upon herself to play into his hands and make opportunities for his wooing.
“What a delightful afternoon for a walk!” Whether he or she made the observation, the other was sure to assent; and then wilful Miss Augusta, unaccustomed to be gainsaid, and seconded by her aunt, also a secret ally of Ben Travis, would drag her cousin forth in defiance of any excuse or protestation, to the undisguised satisfaction of their magnificent cavalier.
It was remarkable that on these occasions, whether they took their way up Ancoats, or Dale Street, or Piccadilly, or Garret Road, they would eventually be led so near to Ardwick Green that it would have been unkind had not Mr. Travis “just stepped across to see how Mr. Laurence progressed.”
And so, too, whenever she went abroad with Cicily at her heels, or when Cicily was sent on errand, nothing would content her imperative young mistress but that she should hasten (whether in her way or out of it), with “Mrs. Ashton’s compliments,” to ascertain the condition of the invalid scapegrace.
Many a scolding did breathless Cicily get in consequence from angry Kezia, the queen of the kitchen, which Augusta paid her messenger for with coins, or ribbons, or kerchiefs, or smooth words, as might be most convenient at the time. And Mrs. Ashton was accredited by the Aspinalls with a degree of attention never contemplated by herself.
But there was one person in the house Augusta avoided from that afternoon at the end of March, when her fascinating hero would have lost his life but for a much humbler hero, of less pretension and fewer attractions. She might have been blind as father and mother to his attachment until that afternoon; but that one wild, impassioned, agonised look of Jabez into her eyes had opened them for ever, she felt she had tasked him beyond human endurance, and was ashamed to look him in the face.