Consent once obtained, the Aspinalls were as eager to press forward the marriage as the Ashtons were to retard it, neither her father nor mother affecting a satisfaction they did not feel.
“My dear,” said the latter to Augusta one day, when her eyes were sparkling over a costly present just received from Laurence, “your father was in hopes you would have fixed your heart on some good steady man like Jabez Clegg, who would have been a comfort and a credit to all of us, and have kept the business in the family after we were in our graves.”
“Pshaw, mamma! how preposterous! I am surprised at my father’s infatuation for that young man. I esteem him quite sufficiently for a friend, but”—and she locked an emerald earring in her delicate ear—“I could not exist with a husband whose heart was in his business. My husband’s heart must hold me and me only; and I must have something to look at as well as to love.”
“Ah! Augusta, it must be a very small heart indeed which cannot find room both for a wife and a business to maintain her fittingly. The sheen of a dress which must last a life is of less consequence than its durable texture.”
“Well, mamma, so long as the material pleases my eyes, I will take the wear upon trust. And do not be surprised that your daughter prefers a fine man and a gentleman to one whose fortune is in the clouds, and whose origin is so obscure, he has not even a name to call his own.”
She was standing to admire herself and her new jewellery in the Venetian glass between the windows as she said this, and her mother’s figure filling in the frame, Jabez Clegg came and went unseen, a pang in his heart and an intensified resolve to make both fortune and name for himself even though his master’s daughter vanished from his vision.
Nothing would induce Mr. Ashton to part with his child until she was at least eighteen; and in that particular he was proof against the importunities of Laurence and the cajoleries of Augusta. So for ten months (during which the lawyers had ample time to quarrel over the settlement of Augusta’s £18,000, so that too much or too little should not be tied down on the lady) the dashing young blade was on his trial, so to speak, and contrived to beguile both father and mother of their prejudices; whilst to Augusta a new world of gaiety was opened out.
As her daughter’s chaperon, Mrs. Ashton renewed her acquaintance with the yellow satin cushions of the Assembly Rooms, the Gentlemen’s Concerts discoursed sweet music in their ears, Miss Ashton could take her seat in the boxes of the Theatre Royal without fear of Madame Broadbent’s fan, and Kezia was in her glory, so many balls and parties had to be catered for; and Mr. Laurence Aspinall was in the ascendant.
All this was inexpressibly painful to Jabez, but as he had written to Ben Travis that “there was something more for men to do than die of disappointment or blighted love,” so he set his face like a rock against the breakers, and gave himself entirely to business. He said to himself it would be cowardice to flee from that which must be borne and mastered, so never another word was heard of his seeking a home elsewhere. If he was brave, he was not foolhardy enough to court pain in the sight of his rival’s triumph, and though in his determination to “stick to his last,” he had eschewed all art which came not within the scope of pattern designing, to that he turned with redoubled assiduity after business hours, having found a profitable market apart from Mr. Ashton’s firm, as his account with the Savings Bank in Cross Street had borne witness from the date of its establishment in January, 1818.
But for a brief space, and that whilst the wound was raw and new, his ministrations to the dying chaplain of the Old Church not only carried him out of sight and hearing, but in a measure drew his thoughts away from his own sorrow.