Читать книгу The Manchester Man - G. Linnaeus Mrs. Banks - Страница 12

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THE extensive oblong enclosure known as Ardwick Green, situated at the south-eastern extremity of the town, on the left-hand side of the highway to Stockport and London, was in 1809 part of a suburban village, and from Piccadilly to a blacksmith’s forge a little beyond Ardwick Bridge, fields and hedges were interspersed with the newly-erected houses along Bank Top.

The Green, studded here and there with tall poplars and other trees, was fenced round with quite an army of stumpy wooden posts some six feet apart, connected by squared iron rods, a barrier against cattle only. A long, slightly serpentine lake spread its shining waters from end to end within the soft circlet of green; and this grassy belt served as a promenade for the fashionable inhabitants. And there must have been such in that village of Ardwick early in the century, as now, for the one bell in the tiny turret of St. Thomas’s small plain red-brick chapel, rang a fashionable congregation into its neat pews, to listen to the well-toned organ and the devoutly-toned voice of the perpetual curate, the Reverend R. Tweddle, if we may credit an historian of the time.

Red-brick church, red-brick houses, hard and cold outside, solid and roomy and comfortable within as Georgian architecture ever was, overlooked green and pond, but, luckily, overlooked them from a reasonable distance, and, moreover, did not elbow each other too closely, but were individually set in masses of foliage, which toned down the staring brickwork, Time and smoke have done so more effectually since.

One of the best, and best-looking, of these houses, near the church, was the one in which the delicate Mrs. Aspinall had presided for a few brief years. An iron palisade, enclosing a few shrubs and evergreens, separated it from the wide roadway, but behind the screen of brick ran a formal but extensive garden and orchard, well-kept and well stocked, with a fish-pond as formal in the midst.

Fish-ponds encourage damp, and damp encourages frogs, efts, and their kin. Here they abounded, and Master Laurence had a sort of instinctive belief that they were created solely for his sport and amusement. Mr. Aspinall, his father, immersed in business during the day, and occupied with friends at home or abroad until late hours at night, saw very little of his son, who was thus consigned to servants during those hours not spent, or supposed to be spent, at a preparatory school close at hand.

The boy was quick and intelligent, had his mother’s amber curls and azure eyes, her delicate skin and brilliant colour, but the handsome face had more of the father therein, and was too unformed to brook description here.

What he might have been with other training is not to be told, but under the supposition that he inherited his mother’s fragile constitution, he had been woefully spoiled and pampered. Opposition to his will was forbidden.

“Bear with him, Kitty, for my sake, and do not thwart him, or you will break his fine spirit,” had been Mrs. Aspinall’s dying charge to her old nurse; and as every demonstration of temper was ascribed by both parents to this same “fine spirit,” what wonder that he grew up masterful—and worse?

His imperious disposition early ingratiated him into the favour of Bob, his father’s groom; and this man, thinking no evil, ignorantly sowed the seeds of cruelty in his young heart.

When the horses were singed, the boy was allowed to be a spectator; if a whelp had his ears cropped, or the end of its tail bitten off, he was treated to a sight. If a brood of kittens or a litter of puppies had to be drowned, Master Laurence was sure to be in at the death. He was taken to surreptitious cock-fights and rat-hunts; and though, when too late, Mr. Aspinall turned the man away for inclining his son to “low pursuits,” nothing was said or done to counteract these lessons of cruelty! No wonder, then, that to him the sight of pain inflicted brought pleasure, or that inhumanity went hand-in-hand with self-will.

One incident—a real one—will suffice to show what Laurence Aspinall was, when Jabez Clegg shed tears over the snake he had killed perforce.

Kitty was in the kitchen alone. The maids were in other parts of the house. She was sitting close to a blazing fire on account of her “rheumatics,” and was in a doze. The evening was drawing in. Master Laurence, coming direct from the garden and the fish-pond, burst open the kitchen door with a whoop which made Kitty start from her nap in a fright. Thereupon he set up a loud laugh as the poor old woman held her hand to her side, and panted for breath. In his hand was his pocket-handkerchief, tied like a bundle, in which something living seemed to move and palpitate. They were young frogs in various stages of development.

“Now, Kitty,” said he, “I’ll show you some rare sport!” and taking one of the live frogs out of the handkerchief deliberately threw it into the midst of the glowing fire.

“There, Kitty; did you hear that?” cried he in rapture, as the poor animal uttered a cry of agony almost human, whilst he danced on the hearth like a frantic savage round a sacrificial fire.

“Oh, Master Laurence! Master Laurence! don’t do that—don’t be so cruel!” appealed Kitty, piteously.

But he had drawn another forth, and crying, “Cruel! It’s fun, Kitty—fun!” tore it limb from limb, and threw it piecemeal into the blaze.

“There’s another! and there’s another!” he shouted in glee, as the rest followed in swift succession; and Kitty, shrieking in pain and horror, ran from the kitchen, bringing the cook and housemaid downstairs with her cries.

For the first time in his life Mr. Aspinall administered a sound castigation to his son, regretting that he had not done it earlier.

No more was said of his son’s fine spirit; but, prompt to act, he lost no time in seeking his admission into the Free Grammar School; and either to spare him the long daily walk in tenderness for his health (Ardwick was more than a mile away), or to place him under strict supervision, boarded Laurence with one of the masters.

Yet he gave that master no clue to his son’s besetting sin; so he was left free to tantalise and torment every weaker creature within his orbit, from the schoolmaster’s cat, which he shod with walnut-shells, to the youngest school-boy, whose books he tore and hid, whose hair he pulled, whose cap and frills he soused in the mud.

It was a misfortune for himself and others that his pocket money was more abundant than that of his fellows. Never had the apple-woman or Mrs. Clowes a more lavish customer, or one who distributed his purchases more freely. Boys incapable of discriminating between generosity and profusion dubbed him generous; and that, coupled with his handsome face and spirited bearing which they mistook for courage, brought him partisans.

Thus, long before his first year expired, and he was drafted from the lower school to the room above, where he came under the keen eye and heavy ferule of Joshua Brookes, he had a body of lads at his beck (many older than himself), ready for any mischief he might propose.

As may well be supposed, there was a natural antagonism between the boys of the Grammar School and of Chetham’s Hospital. As at the confluence of two streams the waters chafe and foam and fret each other, so it is scarcely possible for two separate communities, similar, yet differing in their constitutions, to have their gateways close together at right angles without frequent collision between the rival bodies.

In the great gate of the College, only open on special occasions, was a small door or wicket, for ordinary use; and some of the Grammar School boys, under pretence of shortening their route homeward, finding it open, would make free to cross the College Yard at a noisy canter, and let themselves out at the far gate on Hunt’s Bank. It was a clear trespass. They were frequently admonished by one official or another; their passage was disputed by the Blue-coat boys; but they persisted in setting up a right of road, and opposition only gave piquancy to their bravado.

That which began with individual assumption soon attained the character of boldly-asserted party aggression, and, as the Blue-coat boys were as determined to preserve their rights as the others were to invade them, many and well-contested were the consequent fights and struggles. And thus the two boys, Jabez Clegg and Laurence Aspinall, brought together first at the church door and the baptismal font, came into collision again. But now there was no deferential stepping aside of the humble foundling to make way for the merchant’s son. They stood upon neutral ground, strangers to each other, equal in their respective participation in the benefits of a charitable foundation. Nay, if anything, Jabez had the higher standpoint. His orphanhood and poverty had given him a right to his position in Humphrey Chetham’s Hospital; the very wealth of the gentleman’s son made Laurence little better than a usurper in Hugh Oldham’s Grammar School.

But it is no part of the novelist’s province to prate of the use or abuse of charitable institutions, or to set class in opposition against class. It is only individual character and action as they bear upon one another with which we have to deal.

On more than one occasion Jabez—since his conquest of the snake, the recognised champion of his form—had stopped Laurence Aspinall at the head of a file of boys, and had done his best to bar their passage through the quadrangle.

Success depended on which school was first released.

If in time, Jabez planted himself by the little wicket with one or two companions, and, like Leonidas at Thermopylæ, fought bravely for possession of the pass, and generally contrived to beat off the intruders. Sometimes the Blue-coat boys made a sortie from the yard, and, falling upon the others pell-mell, left and bore away marks of the contest in swollen lips and black eyes.

At length matters were brought to a crisis. Thrice had Laurence and his clique been repulsed, and the shame of their defeat heightened by derisive shouts from a tribe of Millgate urchins—“Yer’s th’ Grammar Skoo’ lads beat by th’ yaller petticoats agen!” “Yaller petticoats fur iver!” “College boys agen Skoo’! Hoorray!”

Master Laurence might have ground his teeth, and harangued his followers, without obtaining an additional recruit, or spurring them to a fresh attempt, but for the taunts of the rabble. But the ignominy of defeat by petticoated College boys was too much for the blood of the Grammar School, and youngsters threw themselves into the party quarrel who had hitherto stood aloof.

Laurence Aspinall was superseded. A big, raw-boned fellow named Travis, took the lead, and rallied round him not only the lads from the lower school, but the bulk of the juniors in the upper room. It is only fair to add that the senior students were in no wise cognisant of the league, or, being so, carefully shut their eyes and ears.

As the result of this organism, on a set day, towards the close of October, when the dusk gathered as the school dispersed, the boys who ran down the wide steps from the upper, and the juveniles who ran up from the lower room, instead of darting forward with a “Whoop!” and “Halloo!” through the iron gate on their homeward way, clustered together within the school-yard, and made way for seniors and masters to pass out before them.

“Get off home with you, and don’t loiter there!” cried Joshua Brookes, as he turned in at his own gate, and saw the crowd massing together in the outer playground.

“Get home yourself, St. Crispin!” shouted Laurence, but not before the house door had closed upon the irascible master.

All books and slates not purposely left in school were consigned to three or four of the smallest boys, duly instructed to carry them to Hunt’s Bank in readiness for their owners.

For a week or more the College boys had been unmolested; not a forbidden foot had stepped within the wicket. The school-master had remarked to the governor, in the presence of his pupils, that he thought Dr. Smith must have prohibited further intrusion.

All the greater was the surprise that dusky October afternoon when a troop of young ruffians, who had stolen quietly one by one through the wicket, and kept under the cavernous shade of the deep gateway until all were within, rushed, with vociferous shouts, from under cover, and tore across the large yard in the direction of the other gate, daring anyone to check them.

The College boys, just emerging from their school-room door in the corner, were, for the moment, taken aback. Then, from the mouth of Joshua Brookes’s new Latin scholar, rang, clear and distinct, Humphrey Chetham’s motto—“Quod tuum tene!” (What you have, hold!) and the Blue-coat boys, with one George Pilkington for their leader, threw themselves, at that rallying cry, like a great wave, headlong upon the intruders.

They met the shock as a rock meets a wave, and down went many a gallant Blue-coat in the dust. Up they were in an instant, face to face with the besiegers; and then, each singling out an opponent, fought or wrestled for the mastery with all the courage and animosity, if not the skill, of practised combatants. Ben Travis and George Pilkington fought hand to hand, and Jabez—not for the first time—measured his strength with Laurence.

Heavier, stronger, older by a few months, Jabez might have overmatched his antagonist; but Laurence had profited by the lessons of Bob the discarded groom, and every blow was planted skilfully, and told. Then Bob’s teaching had been none of the most chivalrous, and Laurence took unfair advantages. He “struck below the belt,” and then tripping Jabez up, like the coward that he was, kicked him as he lay prostrate, with the fury of a savage.

Governor, schoolmaster, librarian, and porter had hastened to the scene; but the assailants nearly doubled the number of the College boys, and set lawful authority at defiance, hurling at them epithets such as only schoolboys could devise.

Fortunately, their own Blue-coat boys were amenable to discipline, and, called off, one by one, retreated to the house, often with pursuers close at their heels. Then the Grammar School tribe set up a scornful, triumphant shout, and, with Ben Travis and Laurence Aspinall at their head, marched out of the College Yard at the Hunt’s Bank gate, exulting in their victory, even though they left one of their bravest little antagonists insensible behind them.