The presumption of the ex-apprentice paled before his devotion and self-abnegation, but, self-conscious, after that first outburst of thanks on the Green, she had shrunk from meeting him in hall or staircase, and had always a reason ready why he should not be invited to their own tea-table when father or mother proposed it.
Public events march on irrespective of private joys or sorrows, and no individual goes out into the world after three months’ seclusion to find things just as he left them. The first use Laurence Aspinall made of his eyes was to look at himself in a mirror; the second on his return to Manchester, to select a substitute for the clustering curls of which he had been despoiled. Closely shut in the carriage which Mr. Ashton lightly designated a box, he was driven down Market Street, to discover that the Spirit of Improvement, “fell bane of all that’s picturesque,” had touched the ancient, many-gabled, black-and-white houses with which his earliest recollections were associated, and they were crumbling into dusty ruins before the potent incantation “Space.” It was the beginning of a very necessary widening of the main thoroughfares of the growing commercial metropolis; but the blanks in the narrow street took Laurence by surprise.
There was a newspaper the more for his restored sight to scan, albeit the Manchester Guardian, which Jeremiah Garnett and John Edward Taylor first gave to the world on the fifth of May, was scarcely likely to take his view of party politics, or of his share in the Peterloo massacre, which was still a disturbing element in the town. Just now the paper, which he found at the perruquier’s, was given over to the discussion of the approaching coronation of George IV., which likewise formed the theme of conversation, not only at the wig-maker’s, but whithersoever he turned when once more presentable.
Somehow, though he found his way to the warehouse, and the cockpit, and the Assembly Billiard Club, and to Tib Street, where Bob the groom had a pretty daughter very much at the young man’s disposal, he did not present himself at his Mosley Street friend’s as soon as might have been expected, considering all things; and Augusta, in the most becoming of morning robes, watching with eager expectation for his coming, began to pant and chill with the sickness of hope deferred. He was by no means the only admirer of the lovely heiress, and was sufficiently desirous to complete his conquest before other competitors were fairly in the field; but he was in perplexity how to deal with Jabez Clegg, who stood in his way after another sort. He was grateful—after a fashion—for the preservation of his life; but ungrateful, inasmuch as Jabez was the preserver.
“Hang it!” said he, in conference with himself, as he tied on a neck-cloth at the glass, “if the fellow had but taken the five hundred pounds, there’d have been an end of it; and one could have wiped one’s hands of him. What right had the beggarly charity-boy to refuse a reward, as if he were a gentleman, I should like to know? I wonder what Kit Townley and Walmsley were about—the cowardly ninnies—to let an upstart like that pull me out of the hole. I’d almost as lief have been drowned.”
And away went a spoiled cravat across the room in his temper; and he rummaged for a fresh one, to the detriment of linen, as he went on—
“There’s one thing, I must either bring down my pride or give up the girl, and be d—— d to it! That old Ashton, with his ‘Just so!’ like a cuckoo, would certainly shut the door in my face if I neglected to make a set speech, and thank his precious protege, who knocks you down with one hand and picks you up with the other. Well, I don’t feel inclined to surrender the finest girl in Lancashire, and with such a fortune as she’ll have, so I’m in for it. I must make a virtue of necessity. Egad! I’ll write to this Mr. Clegg. No, I won’t. It would be a feather in his cap to have a thanksgiving letter of mine to exhibit.”
Having at length determined his course, Mr. Laurence betook himself to Mosley Street, made his bow duly and gracefully to Mrs. Ashton and the young lady, keeping the hand of the latter as long within his own as etiquette would permit, and sending the warm blood mantling to her cheek, with a supplicating glance of devotion as potent as words. Then, with some little prolixity, he professed his desire to “thank his noble preserver” for the life he had saved; and at his request Mr. Clegg (whom he might just as well have thanked in the warehouse without ceremony) was sent for. Coming into the parlour all unwittingly as he did, to find Laurence Aspinall, handsome as ever, and more interesting from illness, standing under the lacquered-serpent chandelier in close proximity to Augusta, sparkling with animation, and blushing like the rose he had just offered her with a pretty simile, his emotions so overmastered him that the polished gentleman had him at a disadvantage, and shone in comparison.
Both Augusta and her mother noted the contrast between the elegant manner, suave tones, and rounded periods of Laurence Aspinall’s thanks and the curt disclaimer of Jabez, though their deductions were different. Augusta was in raptures with the rose-giver.