What did Jabez think, seeing that he did know? Think? He scarcely could think. Feeling seemed to overpower thought, reason, perception. When after a stagnant time he emerged from the stair-head, it was more as a culprit than Jabez Clegg. He put down the bottles and escaped again into the open air, cowed alike by the knowledge which had overpowered him, and by a sense of dishonour at having played the unworthy part of a listener, albeit the listening had been involuntary, seeing that the shock of his discovery had stunned him like a blow from a sledge-hammer, crushing his own long-cherished hopes to death. His next thought was of intense thankfulness that by any means the schemes of Aspinall had been bared to him, and in time to attempt the rescue of his idolised Augusta from the clutches of a villain.
Unacquainted with the events which had preceded Augusta’s removal to Carr—unaware that the Mosley Street doors had been closed against Laurence, or that a formal proposal for the young lady’s hand had been made by the elder Aspinall on behalf of his son, and peremptorily declined by the Ashtons; ignorant that imperious Mr. Aspinall, in his gouty wrath, had sworn “upon his honour” that his son should “marry the girl in spite of the paltry beggar’s-inkle-weaver,” and having no faith in the man himself, Jabez regarded the use of the father’s name only as a proof of his greater perfidy, and gave him no credit even for an honourable intention or an honest emotion. The time was past for Clegg to find excuses for the wrong-doing of his adversary.
Now, with every nerve unstrung, he was required to act, and that promptly. To-morrow would be too late. What if he should take Miss Chadwick into his confidence? But no, he could not lower Augusta in the eyes even of her own cousin and neither she nor anyone there had authority to detain Miss Ashton against her will even if her foot were on the step of the post-chaise. It was imperative that he should reach Manchester immediately, yet how to do so without exciting alarm perplexed him. There was a horse in the stable at the mill, but as he had a bed in Simon’s room, and could neither leave it nor return to it in the night without passing through the Hulmes’ sleeping apartment, there was a difficulty in quitting the house unknown.
“I must be at the mill before daybreak to-morrow having something of importance to attend to, so I will sleep on the squab in the house-place, Mrs. Hulme, and if I am not in for breakfast, do not wait for me,” said he; and no one questioned him, although Mrs. Hulme and her husband were of joint opinion that “Jabez looked terribly put eawt,” and wondered what business he could have on hand of so much consequence.
No one thought of locking country cottage doors. By nine o’clock all the inmates were in bed and asleep. Before ten Jabez, sad at heart, had quietly left the cottage for the mill, had saddled Peveril, and, though no great horseman, was speeding past the “White Hart” along the highway to Manchester, fast as the steady-going roadster would travel. The wind had risen, and the rain came down persistently; but heedless of discomfort or danger, with the one thought paramount in his mind—the preservation of his master’s daughter—he set his teeth and rode on with a feverish impatience, which at length communicated itself to Peveril, and quickened the beat of the sensible animal’s hoof; impatience which would have sent him flying over the toll-gates, had either he or his steed been equal to the exploit, and which could barely brook the delay of drowsy toll-keepers.
Nevertheless as he turned from Piccadilly into Mosley Street, the muffled-up old watchman, catching the echoes of the Infirmary clock, bawled out, to mark his own vigilance, “Just one o’clock, an’ a dark rainy neet!” and the Ashton household had closed its eyelids, and its account with the day, at least a couple of hours.
It is never pleasant to be the bearer of ill-tidings, so no wonder Jabez hesitated with the lion-headed knocker in his hand ere he sent its reverberations growling through the silent house. His hesitation must have influenced the knocker, for the lion had to roar again, and louder, before he heard the window above unclose, and saw Mr. Ashton’s night-capped head thrust out, to ask, in alarm, “Who’s there? What’s the matter?”
Jabez stepped back to the kerbstone to let the dull rays of an oil lamp fall upon his face.
“It is I, Jabez Clegg, sir; I have a matter of importance to communicate.”
“Good heavens, Clegg, you! Surely the mill’s not been burned down?”