The Life Of Thomas Wanless, Peasant Part 11

Wanless felt the observation true, alas! too true, but what could he do?

His means would not allow him to search the whole city. He took a wider range, however, going by turns to one part of the town, now another, sometimes as far as the Angel and Upper Street, Islington, sometimes south to the Elephant and Castle, and the vice haunts of Walworth and the Borough. Occasionally, too, he searched the bridges across the river, but always with a sort of dread that his doing so was a confession that he believed his girl capable of drowning herself.

CHAPTER XVII.

HAS IN IT, ALAS! NOTHING THAT IS NEW.

The winter was moving away thus, and Thomas Wanless was rapidly losing his vigour. Hard work and constant vigils, coupled with a sore heart, and a weak appet.i.te, pulled the man down, and by February he had to confess that the long walks were too much for his strength. Mercifully, the weather often made it impossible for him to go out at night, and when it did clear up, he contented himself with going somewhere to watch the stream of people pa.s.sing by. "I will wait," he said to himself, "for my darling to come to me." He could not even stand very long, but usually sought the rest of a friendly doorstep, and at times a recess on a bridge, watching, with tender wistfulness, the stream of life hurrying on around him. Strange to say, he had more than once seen Adelaide Codling since that night at the theatre, and somehow that always gave him hope. Her face seemed to say to him, "Your daughter cannot be far away."

Often the "unfortunates" came and talked to him, not rudely in their wantonness--alas! poor, forsaken waifs--forsaken by all save G.o.d--but soberly, as if moved to speak to this still, sad-eyed, grey-faced old man, who looked out on the world so keenly, and withal, with such tenderness in his look. They would tell him fragments of their stories--sad enough all, and wonderfully alike--tales of seduction, and heartless desertion, varied only by the degree of turpitude usually exhibited in the man. At one time it would be the tale of a light-headed girl, seduced by her master--a married man--who huddled her out of sight, to hide his shame. Many came from garrison towns, the seduced of the officers there; quiet country parsonages gave their quota of girls educated to feel, and therefore hurrying the faster to their doom, when once cut off from their families by the devices of their betrayers. One woman excited Thomas's pity deeply. Though wasted and fast dying, she still had traces of great beauty when he first met her, leaning wearily on the parapet of Waterloo Bridge, looking out on the water below. She flashed defiance--the defiance of a hunted being--at him when he first spoke to her, but he soon won her heart, and got her story. A fair blonde, oval-faced English girl, she had been comely to look upon, and was wholesome at the heart even yet, for all her misery. She was the victim of a parson, now high in the counsels of the church. The villain was but a curate when he seduced her--the only child of her mother, and she a widow. He promised to marry her, of course, and wiled his way to her heart. Then when he had got all he wanted, and found that she was with child, he cast her off, daring her to lay the babe to his paternity, and spreading a story to the effect that he had found other lovers at her heels. Broken hearted, she buried her head and obeyed, but the shame killed her mother. "I could not die," the daughter said to Wanless; "I have often tried to kill myself, but fear keeps me back now, after all that's past, and it kept me back then. My child died, thank Heaven! I was alone in the world. I drifted to London seeking work, and found it hard to get. When I offered myself for a servant's place, people said I was too well educated, and suspected that something must be wrong. I could have taught in a school, perhaps, but had no one to recommend me. I was hungry; I hated mankind, and cursed them. I said I would betray and destroy men for revenge! and the way was easy! oh, so easy. It has led me here; and now if I could but jump over and be done with it all!"

Involuntarily Thomas put forth his hand to hold her back; but he needed not to do so. The poor woman sank fainting at his feet. He tried to rouse her, but could not; and finally put her in a cab and took her to the hospital. Within a week she died there of brain fever. The doctors said her strength had been too much reduced by privation before the disease seized her for her to be able to survive it. And she was only one among tens of thousands all pressed down the same loathsome course by our "Christian civilisation." Nay, forgive the epithet, there is nothing Christian about it. It is only the civilisation of a priest-born respectableness. The droning hypocrites that we are!

At times Wanless stood by the doors of low music halls and of theatres, but the door-keepers usually ordered him off. He looked too like a detective for their taste. Then he would watch the doors of confectioners' shops, too--those shops which cloak brothels of the vilest type--staring there in the face of day, unheeded by the authorities, who must wink at some kind of outlet for the suppressed brutal pa.s.sions of polished society. More than once Adelaide Codling had crossed his path at such times, and still in the company of Wiseman; but each succeeding time he saw her, Wanless thought the boldness of her manner had an increased dash of despair in it. The fate that she had come after was eating into even her light, giddy heart. The last time he spied her was one night when he stood close by the door of a cafe near Regent Street. The light fell full on her face as the Captain and she pa.s.sed in from their cab, and her face was painted. Already, then, the bloom of youth has vanished, Thomas thought. Her hard but not unmusical laugh had given place to a grating cackle, and a leer of affected gaiety had replaced the merry eye. Poor, erring wanderer, and had a few months brought you to this? Already was the shadow of society's ruthless judgment upon you; could you even now see the blight of your life, the dreary street, the hard world's scorn, the early grave? Ah! yes, and who shall describe the devouring agony that gnawed at that girl's heart? Did she not see day by day the ebbing away of Wiseman's love? Love? G.o.d forgive me for defiling that sacred word. It was only his brutish pa.s.sion that was dying. He was becoming tired of this toy his handling had smudged, and she saw it all--prepared herself for the hour when he would turn his back upon her and go to hunt down other prey. And only six months ago! Ah, parson, parson, has the iron not entered your soul?

What is this that your Christian civilisation has done to your daughter?

Has it made you ashamed even to look for her? Poor, hide-bound, "respectable" sinner that you are, you shall behold her again, though you sought her not--though her mother bade you close your heart and home against her for ever, because she had with that mother's help allowed herself to be betrayed.

One cold March night Thomas Wanless had strayed on to Waterloo Bridge in his coal-begrimed dress. Something, he could not have said what, had impelled him to go there that night. He had taken a hasty supper at a coffee-house near the coal yard to save time. He felt he was "superst.i.tious," yet he went, whispering to his heart "who knows but I may see my child to-night," and trying to be cheerful.

Paying the toll at the north side, he wandered backwards and forwards till the chill from the river began to enter his bones. The one he looked for came not to him--still he could not drag himself away. He sat down in a recess and cowered below the parapet for shelter, waiting for he knew not what. It might have been ten o'clock. He had sat quite an hour, and was nearly going to sleep with weariness, inaction, and cold, when a rustle of a woman's dress near him spurred his faculties into active watchfulness. Peering into the darkness, made visible by the feeble shimmer of the lamp on the parapet, he discovered a woman approach him, crouching down in the recess on the other side of the bridge, weeping bitterly, though almost in silence. Raising himself on his elbow, he was about to speak to her when she started up with a wild despairing gesture, and, jumping on the seat, flung away her shawl.

"Yes," he heard her say to herself, with a wailing resoluteness, "I'll do it; I'll die," and with one look of farewell to the world, where no hope was left for her, a look of despair and horror that gleamed through the darkness, she clutched the parapet and drew herself on to it.

It was all the work of a moment, a flash of time, but Wanless had sprung to his feet at the sound of her voice, and was half across the bridge by the time the woman got upon the parapet. Then he saw her last look, and the gleam of a neighbouring lamp revealed her features. She was Adelaide Codling, and the recognition so startled Wanless that he staggered and for a moment stopped short. In that moment she was lost. Even as the cry burst from his lips, "Adelaide Codling, Adelaide, Adelaide," she threw herself over, as if the sight of a man approaching her had given the last spur to her despair. He reached the parapet but in time to hear the dull splash of her body in the dark tide rolling beneath. As she felt the water close round her, a cry--weird, unearthly, terrible,--broke from the girl's lips, and then all was silent, till the waves threw her up again on the other side of the bridge, when a hollow, dying wail wandered over the river--the last farewell of this poor waif of humanity, sacrificed to the pleasures of the scoundrels who "bear rule"

among us, and call themselves refined.

Wanless was already at the toll-house, panting and hardly able to speak.

But his look was enough, and presently there arose a shouting to lightermen and bargemen. Boats were put off by those who had heard the splash and the cry. A crowd gathered to see. In little more than a quarter of an hour a shout rose from the water far down towards Blackfriars, for the tide was running out, and the girl had gone rapidly down stream. "Saved! saved!" was the cry, and they had, indeed, found the body of Adelaide Codling. She herself had gone. The cold had killed her rather than the length of time she had been in the water--the cold and the shock.

Thomas waited to hear the result of the doctor's efforts at the police office, and then saw the body deposited in a neighbouring deadhouse. No clue to her identification was found upon the body, the poor girl had taken care of that, more mindful of her friends in death than they of her living. But Thomas felt bound to tell the police sergeant what he knew. He gave his own address and that of the Rev. Josiah Codling, but could not tell where the girl lived, or what had been the immediate cause of her suicide. The police, seeing that the upper cla.s.ses were in question, decided to keep names quiet for the present--but communicated with the girl's father, and arranged that the inquest should be delayed for two days to permit him to attend. Thomas himself was told that he would be summoned as a witness, and then went his way.

He hardly knew how he got home to his lodgings that night.

The inquest on the body of Adelaide Codling was held in the upper room of a low-cla.s.s public house in Upper Thames Street. Thomas Wanless obtained liberty to absent himself from work that day, at his own charges, of course, and punctually at three in the afternoon--the appointed hour--he entered the parlour of the inn. He was carefully dressed in the now threadbare and shiny suit of black, which had been his Sunday costume for many years.

A small knot of men had gathered in the room, and a desultory kind of chat was going on when Thomas entered. Two or three were grumbling at the nuisance of these "coroner's 'quests," which took men away from their business, the majority were "having something to drink," and all were utterly indifferent to the business that had brought them there.

Presently the coroner bustled into the room with his clerk. The latter hurriedly called over some names, which were answered, and then produced a greasy-looking volume in leather which he called "the book." This talisman he put into the hands of the man nearest him, to whom he mumbled some cabalistic words, at the end of which the book was pa.s.sed along and kissed in a foolish sort of way by the chosen twelve. Having in this manner "const.i.tuted the jury," proceedings commenced with a procession to "view the body," led by the coroner. It lay in a rough wooden sh.e.l.l coffin, in a dark hole attached to an old city church, and used as a mortuary. Wanless followed the little crowd in a stunned sort of way. To his simple, rustic mind it was a dreadful thing that men should be able to go so carelessly about such a solemn duty. At the mortuary he was surprised to see the Vicar. The old man stood by his child's head, gazing at it in a helpless, dazed way, as if hardly conscious of what it all meant. No emotion was visible on his face, no tears broke from his eyes when a policeman, softened by the sight, led him gently away to the inn parlour out of the way of coroner and jury.

The "viewing" over, the Court returned to the inn to take evidence. Of that there was very little, beyond the personal testimony of the police, until Thomas Wanless was called. When his name was mentioned, Thomas saw the old Vicar start, and for the first time look up with something like intelligence in his glance, then a scared, shrinking sort of expression stole across his features, as if he had suddenly thought of home and cruel village tongues. But he listened quietly to all the old labourer had to say. It was not much, for a proper-minded coroner would not have suffered "family secrets" to be too freely exposed, nor had Wanless himself any desire to tell more than was absolutely needful.

"I saw the deceased," he said, "climb upon the parapet of Waterloo Bridge opposite where I sat, and I ran towards her, but before I could reach her she had gone over. As she prepared to spring she gave one last look behind her, and I knew her to be our Vicar's daughter. I called her by name, but it was too late."

The sad cadence of Thomas's voice, and his obvious superiority of mien, did not prevent one of the jury from asking him in a brutal tone--

"And what were _you_ doing there, my man?"

"I was looking for my own child," answered the old labourer. "At first I thought I had found her, till I saw the face."

"Ah!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the coroner. "Had you then----?" but his better impulse stopped him, and he did not finish the question. Thomas, however, understood it, and replied at once, almost under his breath--

"Yes, your Honour, I have lost a daughter, and Captain Wiseman, the same ruffian destroyed her that enticed away the Vicar's poor la.s.s now lying yonder."

His words sent a shudder through the room, and Thomas was vexed he had spoken them ere they were well out of his mouth, for they seemed to goad the Vicar into a state of active terror which gave him energetic utterance. The more vulgar of the jury p.r.i.c.ked up their ears at the sound of scandal, and one of them said--"Can you give us a clue then as to how this poor girl came to drown herself?"

"Oh, for G.o.d's sake don't," the Vicar interposed, starting to his feet, and stretching forth his hand beseechingly towards the labourer; "for G.o.d's sake don't expose it, Wanless." Then he collapsed again, and began to weep violently, so that Wanless felt sorry for him, and was relieved when the loud voice of the coroner was heard again ruling that "it was quite unnecessary to rake up disagreeables." He saw the "aristocracy in the business," in short, and it pleased him to be strict. Thomas, therefore, was asked a number of venture questions, whether he knew where the deceased lived, or whether he was aware of her circ.u.mstances, &c., questions to which he had mostly to answer "No." His examination was, therefore, soon ended, and the coroner was beginning to tell the jury that it was a common case, requiring the usual verdict, "Suicide while in a state," merely, when, to everybody's surprise, the Vicar intimated that he had a statement to make.

He rose, trembling visibly, and looked round with a vacant eye till he caught sight of Wanless, who had fallen back, and was standing near the door. Then his look changed, and, with something like energy, he exclaimed--"I wish to ask you, gentlemen, not to believe what that man says. He has a spite against my family, and against the family at----"

Here he stopped suddenly, afraid to mention the name of his child's destroyer, and the solemn voice of the peasant was heard saying--"G.o.d forgive you, Josiah Codling," softly, as if to himself. But the Vicar heard, and his trembling increased so much that when a blunt juryman interposed with--"How do you account for your daughter's suicide then?"

he could only stammer a feeble--"I'm sure I cannot say."

"But surely you knew her whereabouts--what she was doing?"

"N-n-no, I cannot say I did quite. My wife--that is her mother--told me that she was visiting an aunt in Kent, and I believed it was so."

"But were there no letters, then? Didn't your daughter write to you at times?" persisted the juryman, though the coroner began to fidget and look black.

"Letters!" repeated the Vicar, as if struck with a new idea; "no, I believe not. Yes, I think she did write to her mother--to my wife that is to say. At least I saw the envelope of one letter. I picked it out of the coal scuttle in the breakfast room, but Adelaide--that is my daughter--did not write to me--not that I recollect."

"Humph! I see, 'grey mare the better horse,'" muttered the juryman--a bluff, not unkindly-looking man, and then there fell a moment of deep silence on the Court. The Vicar stood, bearing himself up with his hands on the table before him, and seemed to have more to say. But when after a brief pause, the impatient Coroner e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed--"Well, sir! have you done?" the Vicar answered--"Y-yes, I think so. I only wished you not to judge my child hastily," and sat down.

A few moments more and the jury had given their verdict--"the usual one"

as the coroner described it--a verdict permitting the corpse to have Christian burial, and all was over. The majority of the jury adjourned to the bar to refresh themselves, and interchange opinions on, what one of them called, "this jolly queer case." The bar-keeper himself joined in the conversation, and Wanless heard him enlarging upon the corruptions of the "Hupper cla.s.ses," as he followed the Vicar down stairs. But there was no danger that comments of this kind would get into the newspapers. A paragraph about the suicide did, indeed, appear in several morning journals, but there was no mention of the seducer's name. Such a thing as an adjournment to obtain Wiseman's evidence was not even hinted. The coroner, jury, press, and all might have been bought up by the Wiseman family, so discreet was the silence--and, perhaps, some of them were. The press, at all events, was well gagged by an infamous law of libel; and as there had been no sensational or melodramatic incidents connected with the girl's end, it was easy to bury all the story in oblivion--for _time_. The "gallant" Captain might roll serenely on his way. Nothing could disturb him here except disease and the moral leprosy bred of his crimes. "After death comes the judgment."

When the little gathering had dispersed, the Vicar and Thomas Wanless found themselves alone together. Both had waited to let the unfamiliar faces disappear. Neither had thought at the moment that this shyness would bring them face to face. The peasant was the first to realise the situation, and as he looked at the broken-down old man before him, he was stirred with pity. On the impulse of the moment he went to where Codling stood, and laying his hand on his arm, said--

"Can I be of any use to you, sir?"

The Vicar started and turned hastily away, shaking Thomas's hand from his arm, at the same time answering--"No, no, Thomas Wanless, I have nothing to say to you. You have done me enough mischief for one day!"

"I have done you no mischief, sir. G.o.d forbid that I should harm you.

Had it been possible I would have saved you this pain,--I would have rescued your daughter."

"Rescued my daughter, would you?" and Codling laughed a low, bitter laugh. "Rescued my daughter! Why cannot you look after your own, Thomas Wanless? I do not want your help."

"I watch for my child night and day," said the peasant solemnly. "It was in seeking her that I met yours--too late. There is ever a prayer in my heart that when I find my Sally I may not be too late for her also. Ah!

poor Sally!" he sighed, and the Vicar, taking no more notice of him, he presently added--"Come out of this place, sir. It is not wise for you to stop here when there is so much yet to be done."

The Vicar took Wanless's words as insinuating that he wanted to drink, which was far enough from what Thomas intended. But the guilty are ever p.r.o.ne to think themselves in danger, and it was with more heat and energy of manner than he had yet shown that the Vicar turned and faced his fellow-villager.

"Go away, you loafing, good-for-nothing fellow," he almost shouted, "surely you have gratified your revenge sufficiently for one day, without standing there to mock at my sorrow, as you have already done your best to make my name a by-word." With that he moved towards the door. But Thomas stood dumbfounded between him and it, and the Vicar, too impatient now to wait for the peasant's slow motions, actually gave him a shove on one side, and hurried outside, muttering to himself as he went.