The Life Of Thomas Wanless, Peasant Part 10

CHAPTER XV.

IS TOO BAD FOR DESCRIPTION.

Unthinkingly, Mrs. Robins repeated this story to Mrs. Wanless one day in Sally's hearing, and immediately repented of her folly, for Sally uttered a low moan and fainted. From that day the gloom of her life seemed deeper. With unceasing tenderness and watchfulness her parents had sought to bring back hope to their lost one's heart, and until this ugly bit of gossip reached her they had hopes of succeeding. Sally had began to talk a little more freely, and, recognising the burden she was to her parents, was becoming anxious to get a situation of some kind--provided always that it might be far away, where no one would know her. But from the time she came back to consciousness on this unhappy day, darkness again settled down on her spirit. She sat apart brooding, as when first her babe lay on her lap. That babe itself appeared to grow almost hateful in her sight, and was left to the care of her mother, weary though the old woman was with work and sorrow. With mouth hard set and eyes looking wistfully sometimes, as if in terror, into a world far away from the home nest, Sally heeded no one. Her father again grew deeply concerned about her, and tried casually to draw her out of the trance that seemed to chain her soul. It was useless. She answered him in monosyllables or never at all. At times too, and when he spoke to her, a strange, resolute look would gather on her face. It was not exactly obstinacy, though she certainly was unyielding. Rather was it a look as of one who had made up her mind to a great sacrifice, and feared that she might be betrayed into abandoning a duty. At that look her father always somehow grew afraid. It was evident to him that his daughter in some way connected Adelaide Codling's flight with her own life, but how he could not guess.

But his fears were only too well grounded, for one day, Sally, too, disappeared. Watching her opportunity when the babe was asleep, her mother busy washing, and her father away at the farm, she dressed herself as if for a walk, went out, and did not return. All day her mother had endured the keenest anxiety in the hope that Sally would come back. She was unwilling to send for her husband, and could only make one or two cautious inquiries through her nearest neighbours. They knew nothing; Sally had been seen, of course, but she looked and walked as usual, with hasty steps and eyes bent on the ground. Though startled at the news, Thomas was not surprised. The flight only fulfilled his own forebodings. Swallowing a morsel of food he started for Warwick, and soon learnt there that a girl answering to Sally's description had left by the slow London train at eleven o'clock. On his way home he bitterly reproached himself that he had not taken means to make such a step impossible. The two or three pounds that Sally had brought home with her he had scrupulously left untouched, and these she had taken with her, as also the few trinkets given to her by the Captain. Thomas had no doubt whatever that Sally had fled to London.

For a time this blow positively dazed Thomas and his wife. Once more their nights were nights of sorrow and tears, and for them the mornings brought no joy. Only the little one that lay sleeping in its wee cot was all unconscious of trouble, or that its presence added poignancy to the bitterness with which the labourer and his wife mourned for their lost one.

Thomas Wanless, however, was not a man to abandon himself long to useless grief. The more keen the pain the more certain was his nature to rise and fight for deliverance, and before long he had made up his mind that, while he had life, his child should not be abandoned. Cost what it would, he must follow her to that dreadful city whose horrors darkened his imagination. The lost one should be found, and, if G.o.d would but help him, saved. So he resolved, although as yet he knew not how his resolution could be carried out.

For a day or two he brooded over it, afraid almost to tell his wife. The fear was weak. No sooner did Mrs. Wanless know what her husband meant to do than she became almost cheerful, and brought her ready wit to bear on all possible plans for enabling him to go. Full of a true woman's self-sacrificing spirit, she at first proposed to go out charring, and so make a living, but the child made that impossible. The utmost she could do was to continue to take in washing, and even that would be a severe strain upon her, with a babe to tend. At best, too, it would afford her only a precarious living, and nothing possible could be left to help her husband in London.

Unable to decide on ways and means, but yet determined to carry out their one great plan, they ended by casting their trust on Providence, leaving the future to take care of itself. As a first step, Thomas went to Stratford, and withdrew the few pounds left in the bank there,--some 10 or 12. That done, he next went to consult his daughter Jane, as to what help she could give. Jane had little, and was saving that little to get married and to emigrate; but when the whole matter was laid before her, she, too, fell in with her father's plans, and offered him her money.

"No, no, I cannot take that," he answered. "I hope to get work in London, and cash enough to keep soul and body together. I only ask you to help your mother with it, should she be in need--to help her all you can, in fact."

Jane promised all the more cheerfully, perhaps, that her little all was not immediately to be taken from her to help in this hunt after Sarah.

Mrs. Wanless also wanted her husband to write to Tom, telling him the circ.u.mstances, and asking for help, but to this he would in nowise consent.

"Tom," he said, "needs all his money just now, and what he sends must come of his own goodwill. Besides we shall get Sally back again, and then the best thing will be to send her out to Tom. She wouldn't go if she thought Tom knew what had befallen her. Jacob does not yet know, Jane will keep silence, and there is no need for Tom to be enlightened."

This reasoning was unanswerable, and Mrs. Wanless had to acquiesce with what heart she could. Nay, more than that, sore against her will, she had to submit to see her husband start for London with only 5 in his pocket. The rest he insisted leaving with her, on the same grounds as he had refused Jane's savings. "I shall get work, my dear," he said; "never mind me," and she had to yield.

Possibly Thomas would have been less confident had he known what going to London, and work in London, meant; but in spite of his dread of the great city, his conceptions were so hazy, that in his heart, as he afterwards confessed, he never contemplated needing to work there at all. He hoped to find Sarah in a day or two, or at most within a week, and once found, was sure that she would come home. His wife, it turned out, formed a truer conception of the task before him, although she had never seen a bigger town than Leamington or Warwick. But her fears did not abate her husband's confidence. Without fixing dates, he told his master and all whom it concerned, that he expected to be back soon.

Struck, perhaps, by the generous purpose of the man, Thomas's master thrust a couple of sovereigns into his hand as they parted, but Thomas would not accept them. In spite of all the farmer could say, Thomas stoutly maintained that he had enough. "My own means are sufficient," he said.

"Your own means sufficient," laughed the shrewd Scot. "Well, I like that! Man, how much hae ye got?"

"Five pounds," said Thomas.

"Five pounds! Five pounds to go to London, and look for a runaway girl with! Good heavens, man, that'll no keep ye a week. Ye'll starve, Wanless, lang afore you find the la.s.sie, if ye ever find her. G.o.d, man, if that's a' you can sc.r.a.pe for the job, you'd better bide where ye are?"

"That I cannot do," Thomas answered. "Starve or not, I must go and seek my child."

The farmer looked at him for a moment, gave a grunt of amazement, and turned on his heel, with the remark--

"Well, well, Wanless, a wilful man must hae his way, they say, and you must have yours, I suppose, but, faith, I doubt you'll rue your folly."

And with that consolatory observation, Thomas parted from a master whom he had learnt to respect, for the rough outside hid a not unkindly nature.

The liking was mutual, and was not on Robson's part lessened by the refusal of his man to take the two sovereigns. The st.u.r.dy independence of his hind was a thing so uncommon, that it excited his admiration, and stirred his somewhat dulled natural feelings of generosity. Many a time during the absence of her husband, Mrs. Wanless had cause to bless the "Missus o' Whitbury Farm" for acts of unostentatious kindness which that motherly Scotchwoman needed, it must be said, little prompting to perform. On her husband's suggestion, she called one day at the cottage, and at once took an interest in the pale, sad woman, and the little child. Thereafter, many little presents of milk, and of b.u.t.ter and cheese, found their way to the cottage from Whitbury Farm. And what Mrs.

Wanless felt most grateful of all for, was that these things were never sent to her by servants, but were brought either by Mrs. Robson herself, or by one of her daughters. The farmer's wife did not try to make Mrs.

Wanless feel that she was a miserable dependent upon her bounty. She had not in that respect, as yet, acquired English manners. In the Lowlands of Scotland, I am told, there is no abject cla.s.s like the English agricultural labourer, and these hard Scotch farmer folks had still to learn that their hinds were not human beings of like pa.s.sions and feelings with themselves.

CHAPTER XVI.

TELLS OF A BETTER QUEST THAN THAT OF THE HOLY GRAIL.

Thomas Wanless set out for London, within a week after his daughter's disappearance, on a dull, cold, January morning. His farewells were cheerful, but his heart was downcast enough, and the further the slow, crawling train took him from home the heavier his heart became. It was dark long before he reached Paddington, to be there turned out upon the murky bewilderment of London streets, knowing not where to turn his footsteps.

Mechanically he followed the string of people and cabs flowing out of the station into Praed Street, the lamps of which showed faintly through damp, smoke-charged air. Then he paused irresolute. A sense of loneliness and hopelessness stole over him, intensified probably by hunger, for he had eaten nothing save a crust of bread and cheese since early morning. He was as one lost, as helpless in the crush of whirling humanity as a wind-driven clot of foam on a storm-tossed sea. Amid all this hurry and bustle of human life, where could he go? how find lodgings? Fairly overwhelmed by the sense of desolation, he leant against a wall to try and collect his thoughts, and mentally prayed for courage and guidance.

For some minutes he stood thus self-absorbed, when a rather kindly voice, speaking almost in his ear, roused him with a

"Good evening, mate. Be you a stranger?"

"Yes," Thomas answered, looking up. "Yes, I came up from Warwick to-day, and never was in London before."

"Be ye in want o' work then, or not?" the voice demanded.

"Why, yes, if I can get work I'll be glad of it; but it wasn't that exactly as brought me here. You see----." But Thomas checked himself, and turned a scrutinising gaze on his interlocutor. He saw a rather grimy, ill-clad, thick-set man, whose face seemed as kindly as his voice, though its expression was barely discernible, except by the eyes, which shone brightly in the dull, yellow light of the neighbouring lamp.

By the sack-like covering which the man wore on his back, and by his be-smudged appearance generally, Thomas judged that he must be a labourer among coals. He was poor at any rate, and he looked kindly; so after a brief inspection, to which the stranger submitted in silence, and as a matter of course, Thomas resumed--

"You see, I'm come up to look for a la.s.s of mine as has runned away."

"Ah!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the stranger. "Ah!" and then he stopt with his mouth open, as if embarra.s.sed by this sudden confidence. But he soon recovered himself, and after relieving his feelings with a "Well, I never! Who'd a thowt it?" came back to practical business, by asking Thomas if he knew of a bed anywhere.

Thomas said "No."

"Well, then," answered the man, "you just come along with me. You ain't likely to find the gal to-night, and you can't stand there till mornin'!

Perhaps my missus can give you a shake-down in the corner somewhere."

Thomas was only too glad to accept the stranger's offer, and, hoisting his bundle of clothes over his shoulder, with his stick through the knot, he at once a.s.sented, and followed wheresoever the other led. They trudged along for a good half-hour, mostly in silence, for Thomas was in no mood for talking, and his companion appeared to have no gifts in that direction. At length they reached the door of a dingy, tumble-down house in that now happily abolished slum, Agar Town, and into this the coal-heaver turned, saying--

"Mind the steps, friend. The stairs is rather out of repair." In this rickety, filthy, old tenement the coal-heaver rented two rooms on the third floor. He had a wife and three poor sallow-looking children, who were frightened when they saw a strange man enter with their father. The man introduced his wife as Mrs. G.o.dbehere, and said his own name was William. They invited Thomas, who in turn had given his name, to share their supper, and he contributed to the feast the remainder of his bread and cheese. Consulted about a bed, Mrs. G.o.dbehere declared that it was impossible for her to give Thomas one, and he agreed with her. She knew, however, a neighbour who had a lodging to let; 2s. 6d. a-week she charged for a small room with a bed in it--the lodger to find and cook his own food. In this room Thomas was ultimately installed, and right thankful he was to find a roof above his head in that appalling city.

The walk along Marylebone and Euston Roads had impressed him more profoundly than ever with a sense of the vastness of London. It was like a first lesson in the meaning of infinity, and it struck him with a feeling of dread. Oft times did he ask himself that night whether he was not, indeed, mad in attempting to trace Sarah in such a sea of human beings. But mad or not, he resolved that his task should not be lightly abandoned.

Thus occupied he pa.s.sed a restless night, and got up weary next morning.

His bed, he found to his cost, was not over clean, and it was with a depressing sense of comfortlessness that he went to seek the G.o.dbeheres.

The coal-heaver had already gone to his work, but Mrs. G.o.dbehere directed him to an eating-house near by, where he went and had some breakfast. Refreshed a little, he forthwith started on his quest. He would wander the myriad streets of London till he found his lost one, he had said to himself.

And day after day, night after night, he did wander hither and thither through the most frequented thoroughfares of London, returning late and worn-out to his miserable lodging. A growing hopelessness lay at his heart, and made him sometimes almost unable to drag his limbs past each other, but he held on with a dogged persistence that was almost sullen.

Through G.o.dbehere's friendliness, and the pressure of his own heart agony, he had sc.r.a.ped acquaintance with sundry policemen, but they could give him no effective help. One would suggest that he ought to keep a close watch about the Strand, another mentioned Oxford Street and the Circus, or the Haymarket. All agreed, in their callous sort of way, that "if she had followed a man to London, she was a'most sure to find her way to the streets before long." Thomas did not doubt it. He knew the pride of his daughter too well to doubt it. Rather than bear among her kindred the brand which her unfallen sisterhood would put upon her, she would face a life of open shame, where none could cast stones at her. So Thomas held on his way, but never got a glimpse of his lost one. His means were nearly exhausted, for, pinch as he might, it costs money to live in London. Yet he would not surrender. No, he would work. But how could he get work--he, a mere street loafer, and as lonely in London as if it had been a desert. London with its hurrying crowds, its rush of vehicles, its roar and bustle, and flowing lights, fairly broke down his imagination. He felt himself a helpless atom amid a ma.s.s of atoms that knew nothing of his misery, and grew too weak-hearted almost to seek for work. But for his quest, he felt--sometimes even said to himself--that he could lie down in the gutter and die. Possibly his wretched lodging and the sleepless nights he had pa.s.sed in his pain had much to do with this utter collapse of mind. I cannot decide, but he has told me that never till that time did he realise the sustaining power of a fixed idea. "I came to find Sally," he said, "and I held to that." For that he braved not only hunger and cold, but the horrors of the night in the most abandoned thoroughfares of London. For that he mingled in the crowds of educated and other roughs that frequented theatre doors, and the doors of the coffee-houses and prost.i.tute dens in the Haymarket and Gardens. For that he endured cursing and foul language inconceivable, stood to see men and women hurrying themselves into worse than a fiend's condition by their self-indulgence and sin. Into low dancing rooms he penetrated, often to be bundled out neck and crop as a spy, or at best to be horrified by filthy jokes or still more filthy exhibitions of obscenity. That very Agar Town, in which he lived, he again and again explored, facing its stenches and miseries, its wantonness and riot, and worst of all, its terrible crowds of weary, sin-rotting, broken-hearted, down-beaten, and unfortunate humanity. Often did he see women there peering out of their dingy, rag-stuffed windows, that bore traces of having once been as fair as rash Sally. Nay, the very rag-pickers who lodged in its garrets, G.o.dbehere a.s.sured him, had many of them once been "flaunting women of the town." Women of the town, indeed, and was not the town doomed? Thomas thought that it was. To him London was already h.e.l.l. The fumes of abominations choked his mental senses, and made him long to escape.

Nevertheless, his mind was fixed. He could not go without his child, and in order to carry out his purpose he must work. By the friendly help of G.o.dbehere he ultimately obtained employment in the coal yard at Paddington-wages 2s. 6d. per day. He felt rich and strong for his task henceforth, and as soon as he could he removed to a rather better lodging near his work. At a waste, as he considered it, of several evenings' lodging-seeking, he found a small clean room in the neighbourhood of Lindengrove, for which, including a plain breakfast, he paid 5s. 6d. a-week. His landlady was an elderly widow who kept three lodgers, and she rather demurred to Thomas's demand for a latch-key, so that he might go in and out at nights as he pleased, but his sad, earnest face, and his remark that he was looking for a lost daughter, conquered her fears. Thomas had his key, and felt a kind of thankfulness that if he did find Sally he could now bring her to a better refuge than the vermin-filled hole in Agar Town.

Five weeks had well-nigh pa.s.sed, and Thomas was no nearer his object, to all appearance, than the day he arrived in London. But now that he had work he felt more a.s.sured of his purpose, and therefore less sad. So he sent home cheery letters to his wife, bidding her hope yet for Sally, telling her he felt that G.o.d would not forsake her or them. All his letters his wife got read to her by the schoolmaster, and then pa.s.sed them on to Jane. Money he would have sent, but could not. All that was left after paying his food and the clothes he needed for his work he spent in his quest. For work did not cause him to abate his vigilance, nor did it much reduce his wanderings. As soon as the yard closed he hurried home, changed his clothes, swallowed a cup of tea, and, sometimes on foot, sometimes on the top of an omnibus, he made his way to the usual haunts of vice. There he would wander, haunting theatre doors, peering into refreshment bars, and sometimes spending sixpence to get inside a low music hall. The sights he saw froze his very heart's blood with horror, and he often asked himself--Is all this vice, then, the product of our civilisation? Where is the Christianity in the habits of a people who permit tens of thousands of their fellow beings to rot and perish as a matter of course, and prate about the social evil in their sleek respectable way as if it was a dispensation of heaven? How many of these poor girls, whose lives had been blasted, who now brazenly mocked "society," and laid snares for the destruction of its darlings, had mothers, perhaps, even now weeping for them in secret? As he thought of these things he felt as if he could wander, like Jonah, through the streets, preaching the doom of this city of Sodom, whose streets already savoured of the bottomless pit.

Thoughts of this kind were brought home to him with terrible force one night that he saw Adelaide Codling. He was standing watching the play-goers leaving Drury Lane, when his eye suddenly caught the face of that girl amid a group of women and "swells," amongst the latter of whom was Captain Wiseman. She was showily dressed, and had a profusion of glaring jewellery scattered about her person, and she was talking fast, and laughing in a loud, defiant sort of way. But Wanless could see that she was not happy. As she drew near where he stood he could mark the restlessness of her eye, and the nervous boldness of her manner, and he pitied her. Is this what she has come to already? he thought to himself, and involuntarily shivered. Ah! if his own sweet la.s.s was now like this, could he reclaim her? Would it not be too late? Adelaide Codling pa.s.sed on, unconscious of the presence of her fellow-villager, saw not the pleading look that crossed his face, the eager step forward he took as if to speak with her. She entered a cab with Wiseman and two others, and disappeared from sight.

The eagerness of Thomas to find his lost one was intensified after that night. Hardly a night-watchman in all the district escaped his importunities, and from most of them the old man met with a rough kindness that soothed him even in his absorbing grief. One old sergeant he met in the Strand, and who had more than once listened to his descriptions and his queries, advised him to alter his beat. "There are a great many haunts of streetwalkers," he said, "besides the Strand and the Haymarket. Why not try the south side of the river, or up Islington way? There is the East-end, too, and Oxford Street and Holborn. Yes, none knew where a girl may get to, once she cuts adrift in London. Such heaps of them takes to the streets nowadays, that you can find some in every thoroughfare in London."