She was singing at her batting-frame—not an unusual thing now, for rumour had whispered in her ear that the Lancashire Volunteers were on their homeward march. Even as she sang, a stout young fellow in uniform stopped at the narrow entrance of the court, and questioned two or three gossiping women, who, with arms akimbo, blocked up the passage, if they knew the whereabouts of Simon Clegg, the tanner, and his daughter Bess.
“What! th’ wench as has the love-choilt?” answered one of the women.
“The girl I mean had no child when I saw her last,” responded he, between his set teeth.
“Happen that’s some toime sin’, mester, or it’s not th’ same lass. That’s her singin’ like a throstle o’er her work at the oppen winder.”
“And that’s her choilt,” said another, ending by a lusty call, “Jabez, lad, coom hither!”
Jabez, taught to obey his elders, came at a trot, in answer to the woman’s call. The volunteer looked down upon him. The child had neither Bess’s eyes nor Bess’s features; but he heard the voice of Bess, and over the woman’s shoulder he caught a glimpse of her face at the distant window. It was Bess, sure enough!
Sick at heart, Tom Hulme, for it was he, leaned for support against the side of the dark entry. These women but confirmed what he had heard in Skinners’ Yard from Matt Cooper’s vindictive wife. The deep shadow of the entry hid his change of countenance. Without a condemnatory word, without a step forward towards the girl whose heart was full of him, he steadied himself and his voice, and mustering courage to say, “No, that is not the lass I want,” strode resolutely out of the entry; and, bending his steps to the right, turned up Toad Lane, and so on to the “Seven Stars,” in Withy Grove, where he was billeted.
He had come back from Ireland full of hope, and this was the end of it! He had been constant, and she was frail! She whom he had left so pure had sunk so low that, though she bore the brand of shame, she could sing blithely at her work, unconscious or reckless of her degradation! Tom had only been a hand-loom weaver, and was but a private in his regiment, but he had a soul as constant in love, as sensitive to disgrace, as the proudest officer in the corps. He might have doubted Sally Cooper’s artful insinuations, but for the unconscious confirmation of the other women, and the personal testimony of poor little Jabez; the innocent child, borne with sorrow by his own dead mother, bringing sorrow to his living maiden-foster-mother.
The little lispings of the child conveyed no impression to Bess’s understanding, but one of the women bawled out to her from the open court—
“Aw say, theer’s bin a volunteer chap axin’ fur a lass neamed Bess Clegg, but he saw thee from th’ entry, and said yore not th’ lass he wanted!”