The Life Of Thomas Wanless, Peasant Part 13

"Do not get yourself hurt for me," she sobbed, "go away and leave me.

I'm not worth caring for any more."

Thomas answered by clasping her closer to his bosom, and then putting his arm in hers, he led her from the house, none daring to say him nay.

Oaths, shrieks of hysterical laughter, and obscenities followed them as they went, but the look on the peasant's face, and the remembrance of his strength of arm, were enough to protect his daughter and him from further ill-usage.

"Thanks be to G.o.d I've found ye, my la.s.s; found ye, never to let ye out o' my sight again in this world," Thomas murmured when he found himself alone in the street with his long-lost one, and there welled up in him a holy joy which was unutterable.

His daughter hung her head, and answered not, but she suffered him to lead her to his lodging. A 'bus took them to the head of Portland Road, and thence they walked. It was past midnight before they got home, and all the house was silent; but Thomas gave his daughter his bedroom, and groped his way to the parlour, where he hoped to get a sleep in an easy chair--first prudently turning the key in Sarah's door, to give her no room for untimely repentance.

There was no sleep for his eyelids that night. The cold alone might have kept him awake in any case; but he was too excited to feel it as other than a stimulus to his thoughts. Past and future rolled before him--his daughter lost, joy at her discovery, pain at the life she had led. The grey dawn found him fevered with his thoughts, shivering in body, burning at the heart. Nevertheless, he had resolved to go home that day by the early train; and with that view he roused the landlady to beg an early breakfast for himself and his child. "I have found my la.s.s," was all he ventured to explain, and the woman answered she was glad to hear it. In his eagerness to go home he forgot to tell the coal agent for whom he worked, and forgot also to draw four days' wages due to him--did not remember till the day after he and his daughter reached Ashbrook.

When Sarah, in answer to her father's summons, came down to breakfast in the front kitchen, it was easy to see that she also had slept little.

Her eyes were swollen and red, and she could not eat anything. A cup of hot tea she swallowed, and that was all. Her father spoke to her in the old familiar Warwickshire dialect, and urged her to "eat summat, as she had a long day's journey afoore her," but Sally could not, and to all he spoke answered only in monosyllables. Not until he began to talk directly of going "home" did she wake to anything like animation. The very sound of the word made her weep, and her father led her away to his own room to reason with her.

"Oh, don't ask me to go back," she cried; "I cannot, I cannot; I'm fit only to die."

But her father soothed her, talked to her of her lonely mother watching for her coming, praying to see her child's face again before she died; and when that did not move her, he bade her think of her little babe she had left last year. "How could ye like her to grow up a-lookin' for a mother, Sally, la.s.s, an' not findin' one?" That seemed to touch her more than all his a.s.surances that no one would ever reproach her or cry shame upon her in her own father's house. Still she yielded not, but cried out that she was lost to them all, to every good in this world.

"You might not blame me openly," she said, "but I would have the feelin'

in my heart all the time that I was a shame an' disgrace to you, and that pity alone kept you from telling me so. No, no, no, I will not go back to Ashbrook."

"Look here, then, Sally," said her father at last, "if you wonnot go back, I'll stay by you. My mind's made up. I'll never lose sight of ye again, not while I'm alive; and if you wonnot go home wi' me, I must bide wi' you. There is no other way. It will kill your mother, and it will kill me, an' leave your child an outcast orphan, but ye are determined, an' it must e'en be so."

This staggered her, but still she yielded not, thinking, doubtless, that her father meant not what he said, till at last, in despair, he told her the story of Adelaide Codling. He spoke of her despairing looks, her rapid descent from wild gaiety to death, of her last farewell to this world, of her lonely grave, and her poor, old, broken-hearted father, and wound up by asking--"Will you face an end like that, Sally? Dare you do it, my child? When I saw her jump on the bridge I thought it was you," he added, with a look that went straight to his daughter's heart.

The story had at first been listened to in dogged silence. Then the girl's tears began to flow, at first silently, at last with convulsive sobs. Her father held out his hand as he ceased speaking, and she, moved so deeply as to be lifted out of herself, laid both her hands in his, and said--

"Father, I'll do as ye wish. I'll go home wi' ye." He drew her down on her knees beside him, and prayed fervently for mercy and forgiveness for them both. "But my heart was too full to beg," he afterwards said to me.

"I could only give G.o.d thanks for his infinite mercy in restoring my lost child."

They missed the morning train, and had to wait till the evening. In the interval Sarah had stripped off the tawdry ornaments she wore, and plucked a gaudy feather from her hat--pleasant incidents which her father noted. In the middle of the night almost they reached the old cottage in Ashbrook, and both were glad that the darkness hid them from every eye save G.o.d's.

CHAPTER XX.

MAINTAINS THAT FOR THE WRONG SIN-BURDENED MORTAL NO SLEEP IS SO SWEET AS THE LAST LONG SLEEP OF ALL.

There was deep joy in Mrs. Thomas Wanless's cottage that night--joy all the deeper for the pain that lay beneath it. Mrs. Wanless was not a demonstrative woman at any time, but that night she embraced her daughter again and again, and held her to her heart with pa.s.sionate eagerness. Sarah was sad, and after the first momentary flash of delight, shrank back within herself. She went and looked at her child sleeping quietly in its grandmother's bed, but did not kiss or caress it. The joy of the parents was dimmed at sight of this indifference, but when Sarah had retired to rest, Thomas did his best to encourage his wife to hope. "It will soon be all right between mother and child," he prophesied, and this no doubt was their hope. It was long, however, ere they saw any fulfilment of it. In truth, shame took so deep a hold on Sarah's mind that she became a sort of terror to herself. She was so crushed by the past, so utterly incapable of rising out of the darkness that shrouded her mind, that it is probable she would again have fled from her father's roof had she not been prevented by illness. The life of false excitement she had led in London had sapped her const.i.tution, and she had not long returned when her health began to give way. Fits of shivering seized her, then a hacking, dry cough, which could not be dislodged. Her complexion grew transparent, her eye preternaturally bright. She was, in a word, falling into consumption, and in all probability would not live long to endure her misery. This was doubtless the kindest fate that could now befall her, but it was a new grief to her parents when they awoke to consciousness of the fact that this lost one, so lately found again, was slowly vanishing from their sight for ever.

She herself grew happier in the prospect of early death, and from being silent and cold became gentle, opener in her manner, and more kindly to all around her, as if striving by her tender care of her child and her grateful affection for her parents to make the last days of her life on earth a sweet memory. After a time, too, as she became weaker, her heart moved her to talk of the past, and she bit by bit told her mother the story of her flight and her life in the great city. The sum of it all was misery, an agony of soul unspeakable, from which she ultimately found no escape save in drink. Her own motive in running away after Adelaide Codling was not very clear even to herself. Some vague idea of finding that other victim, and of rescuing her from the doom that she herself was stricken by, she had, but the governing motives were shame and pride. Once in the gate of h.e.l.l, which London is to tens of thousands every year, she tried to get access to Captain Wiseman, and haunted the entrance of his barracks for a week, but he came not. She did see him at a distance two or three times afterwards, but women such as she was now dared not approach so great a person in the open streets by day. With more persistence she sought for Adelaide Codling, but with no better success. The only occasion when she got near enough to speak to that poor girl was one day that they met by a shop door in Regent Street. Adelaide came forth gorgeously dressed, and carrying her head high just as Sarah pa.s.sed. They recognised each other, and Sarah stopped to speak, but the other turned away her head with a toss like her mother's, and hurried off.

Soon the peasant's daughter had to abandon all thoughts of others, and face hunger for herself. Her money and trinkets found her in food and lodgings but for a few short days, and then she, having obtained no situation, had to leave the servants' home where she had at first found refuge, and--either starve or take to the streets. Her sin had branded her; she had no "references," and no hope. Had courage only been given her she would have died, but she dared not. It seemed easier to go forth to the streets. The raging "social evil" that mocks in every thoroughfare Christianity and the serene, t.i.the-sustained worshipping machinery of the State, offered her a refuge. There she could welter and rot if she pleased, fulfilling the excellent economy of life provided for us in these islands. The army composing this evil only musters some 100,000 in London, and is something altogether outside the pale of established and other Christian inst.i.tutions.

That summer and winter when the lost Sarah faded away and died was a hard time for Thomas Wanless and his wife. Work was precarious, and thus, added to the pain of seeing their child fade away, was the bitter sense of inability to do all that was possible to prolong her life.

Nearly all the labourer's savings had disappeared during Thomas's long quest. But they struggled on, complaining to none but G.o.d, nor did their trials break their trust in His help. They felt that the kindness with which all friends and neighbours treated them in their sorrow was a proof that the Divine Father of all had not forgotten them. And their daughter herself became a consolation to their grief-worn spirits. A sweet resignation took possession of her mind as she neared the end. The pa.s.sions of life died away, and the clouds that had hidden her soul for the most part disappeared. Her parents might dream for moments, when her cheeks looked brighter than usual, that she would recover, but she herself knew that death was near, and thanked G.o.d.

During this time the Vicar--poor old man--came oftener than ever to the labourer's cottage. He could not be said to a.s.sert himself against his wife in doing so, for he came as if by a power stronger than his own wrecked will. When he was seated by the labourer's fireside, he seemed to be at peace. Often for an hour at a time he hardly spoke, but just sat still and looked with a sad kindliness, pathetic to behold, on the wasting form before him, and either stroked her hand held in his own, or gently patting the golden head of the little la.s.s that now began to toddle to his knee. And when the visit was over, the cloud settled down upon him again. He went forth dejected, a hopeless-looking being, and crawled helplessly back to the Vicarage. He called on the morning of Sarah's death. She sank gently to rest on a raw February morning nearly eight months after her return, and within a week of her twenty-first birthday. When Mr. Codling was told, he stood for a moment as if dazed, and then asked to be led to Sarah's bedside. There he stood, gazing long, with bent head, till the tears rose and blinded him. With them the higher emotions of his soul welled up within him, and he turned and took the hand of Wanless, who stood by his side.

"Thomas, my friend," he said, "I envy your daughter that rest. I, too, long to be as she is. Life has become all a waste desert to me; oh, so dreary, dreary." Then, after a pause, he went on--"And I envy you, Thomas, for have you not cause to rejoice that Sarah has died in her father's house forgiven? Had it been but so with my Adelaide; oh, had it been but so, I think--I--hope would not have been lost to me. But I wish I were dead--yes, dead and forgotten," and, letting go the hand he had held, he knelt down by the bedside, buried his face, and wept as he had wept only by his daughter's grave.

Unhappy old man. Who shall judge him; who say that the All-pitying had not forgiven? Calming himself presently, the aged Vicar rose to his feet, and looked again on the dead face, so different in its white purity and smile of peace from the one he had looked on in London. He bent and kissed it, and then suffered the grief-worn but calm old labourer to lead him quietly away. "G.o.d bless you and comfort you, sir, and give you His peace," was all that Thomas trusted himself to utter; but sorrow had made these men brothers indeed.

Although Thomas and his wife knew in their hearts that Heaven had been merciful to their child and to themselves in taking her away, their sorrow was nevertheless keen. Nay, in some senses it was keener, because the "might have been" rose before the mind. Here was in truth a waif--a lost one--mercifully removed from further sorrow, but had there been no wreck, how short would her life have seemed, how sad its early close. In Wanless's life, therefore, few days were darker than the day on which he laid Sarah to rest beside the long-lost little ones in the old churchyard. It was little consolation to him that half the village gathered reverently to the funeral, and yet as he thought of the other grave by which he had stood not many months before, his spirit was somehow soothed. The contrast must have struck the Vicar likewise, but he made no sign. He insisted, however, on reading the burial service himself, in spite of the remonstrances of his young curate, who usually did this work. Bareheaded and trembling, pale, and feeble looking, with his white thin hair fluttering in the icy breeze, the sight of their old pastor that day drew tears to many eyes. His tremulous voice seemed more solemn to the listeners that day than ever before, and they loved and pitied the frail old man. More than one villager remarked to his neighbour as they left the grave that he "did not think Mr. Codling would be long in following Sally Wanless."

It was in truth to be so. The Vicar did not live long after, but his was not the next burial. Before he went--months before--old Squire Wiseman died and was buried in the family vault, with the pomp and circ.u.mstance that became his station. No one sorrowed at his death, but the lack of grief was hidden by the abundance of display. All the army of underlings were put in mourning at the new squire's expense. Cecil was now lord of the Grange, and one of his first steps was to make it too hot a place for his mother, by filling it with debased men and women--t.i.tled fledglings and their harpies, horsey men, and sharpers. The wealthy marriage his mother had sought for him never came off. An Irish peer, needy as Wiseman, but with a more marketable commodity in the shape of his t.i.tle, had swooped down and carried off the prize. The carpet or "turf" soldier consequently came to his inheritance buried in debt, but that seemed to make him only the more extravagant. His true place was the gutter, but the land was entailed, tenants were squeezable, and though hard up, the new squire floundered on, cursing and a curse.

His debts should have ruined him, but they merely ruined his tenants, impoverished the land, and made those driven to depend on him as beggarly as their master. The weight of this rottenness lay heaviest of all on the labouring poor, who stood undermost in the social scale. Poor farmers meant less labour, badly tilled soil, reduced wages, and the hinds became a picture of misery. All Ashbrook parish suffered for the sins of this sprig of the aristocracy. What of that! Are the sacred, priest-sanctioned, bishop-blessed rights of property to be interfered with because the people want bread? That would be contrary to all law and order, as established by these delicate perverters of the Hebrew Scriptures.

No; better far let the people starve; let the mortgages squeeze those who do not own; make the fair earth bestowed on man--to be cultivated, tended, and rendered fruitful--a waste howling desert, peopled by wild animals, for whose shooting, wealthy pelf-rakers from the centres of trade are ready to pay high rents. Next to our heaven-bestowed Poor Law, the Law of Entail, which binds the land to a name or a family, has been the greatest factor for evil in the national life of England. It has preserved our "inst.i.tutions;" gives continuity to our history, men a.s.sert. Perish the people then, but hold fast to this sheet anchor. "It preserves scoundrels from justice, and the fate they have earned," by reformers. What of that? These men have the right to be abominable--you and I, the workers and the sweaters, the privilege only to bear their abominations.

It has always struck me, though, that the fetish machinery of the English Establishment is imperfect in one particular. While in actual fact all "lord" bishops, and most preachers therein, determinedly oppose whatsoever would emanc.i.p.ate the people from their bondage, the best of them never daring to strike boldly at the root of the evils that threaten England with extinction, that fill the land with misery, that huddle the bulk of our population into the fever dens of her cities--it has struck me, I say, that their liturgy is incomplete, almost hypocritical. A prayer like this should be inserted among the collects of the day, instead, say, of the collect for peace, which comes so ill from the lips of men whose ambition is usually to train some of their children as licensed men-slayers. Let the lawn-sleeved "lord" bishops look to it, then, and take this hint:--

"Sanctify might, O Lord, against right, and make it stronger and stronger. Bless iniquities in high places, and cause the hypocrisy of princes to be exalted in the eyes of the people. Protect the n.o.bility and gentry in their harlotry, and let holiness be measured by the fineness of the garments. Grind the poor in their poverty, and cause them to pay that they owe not. And O Lord, we beseech Thee, suffer not the oppressed to have justice, lest they rise up against us and refuse to give us the t.i.thes we have filched from the indignant. These things do, O Lord, and our lips shall praise Thee."

If you will honestly pray thus, serene "lord" bishops, much-wrangling, gorgeously-embroidered deans, vicars, and inc.u.mbents, you will earn the respect of honest men. Whatever you do, I beseech you go not on as you do now, lest the people should one day _act_. They think not a little even now.

Fare ye well, then, Cecil Wiseman, sham soldier, horse racer, blasphemer, drunkard, seducer, sot, farewell! The upper world "society"

protects you, the Church shields you, nay, the priest must e'en bow when you abduct his daughter, and the very Jews themselves, wholesome scourge of your cla.s.s though they be, cannot utterly ruin you--here. Go your ways--I leave you to G.o.d. What witness, think you, will that diseased body, that bloated face and hang-dog look of yours, bear against you in the judgment? In that day your very victims may pity you.

And has not the judgment already come on your mother--cast out, despised, lonely, poor as she is? Alone, she lives in her little jointure house at Kenilworth, white-haired, feeble, full of bitterness of spirit. All the glory of her life has gone. The meanest servant in Warwickshire may look down on her with commiseration. Your sins have torn what heart she had, and she begins to awake to the fact that the law of compensation, the dim foretaste of divine justice, can reach even such as she. To her likewise let us bid adieu.

CHAPTER XXI.

BRINGS US ALL TO THE JOURNEY'S END.

The closing years of Thomas Wanless's life were years of peace. His strength never came back to him after his daughter's death. Indeed, all the summer that followed it he was beaten down by his old complaint rheumatism, but there was no dread of the workhouse and the pauper's grave upon him now. His boy, Thomas the younger, was prospering in the New World, where landlordism had not yet grown a curse, and insisted on sharing his modest wealth with his parents. Had the old man been well he would probably have st.u.r.dily refused this help, but as things were he bowed his head and took what G.o.d had given, thankful to his son, thankful to Heaven, and rejoicing above all things that his boy--his three children that remained--were delivered from the life that he himself had led. But what would his end have been save for this a.s.sistance? a.s.suredly a pauper's. Nothing could have saved him from that fate. The doom of the labourer is written. It is part of the recognised glory of the English const.i.tution that he shall die in misery as he lives; that if he becomes disabled, his shall be the pauper's dole.

The prosperity of young Thomas rendered Thomas and his wife less reluctant to let their other children go to Australia. They clung to them, of course, and would have fain kept them, as it were, within sight.

Old Mrs. Wanless was heart-broken at the thought of losing Jane, but she bore her sorrow and made no complaint, when her husband, his own heart torn with grief, said--"Let the la.s.s go. There is hope for her and her husband yonder. Here there is none." Jane therefore married her young gardener in the autumn of the year of Sarah's death, and went away to join young Thomas in Victoria. And the soldier-boy, Jacob, went with them. His time of soldiering was not ended, but his brother Thomas bought him off, and a.s.sisted them all to go to the new country. Jacob was the labourer's prodigal son, and was loved accordingly. While he soldiered his parents hardly ever saw him, but he spent a couple of weeks at home before setting sail for Australia; and then the strength of his nature, its likeness to that of his father, and the trials he had endured, brought the old man and him very near to each other. Thus the wrench of parting was keenest for old Thomas in his case, because the joy had been but a flash of light in a dark existence.

"I will never see your face again," the old man said to his children the last Sunday evening they pa.s.sed together. "To your mother and me this parting will be bitterer than death, because you will live, and we will never hear your voices nor see you more in this world."

"Oh, father, do not say that," sobbed Jane; "you and mother will come out to Australia to us, and we'll all live together and be so happy."

"No, my dear, that will never be. Mother and me are too old to move now.

We will stay behind and pray for you. The time will not be long, and we have hope. Be brave, my children, and be G.o.d-fearing, and, I doubt not, we shall meet in a better world than this."

In this spirit they parted, and henceforth old Thomas Wanless and his wife were left alone with only the little child that Sarah had bequeathed to them--alone, but not miserable. As the keen edge of sorrow blunted, the old people went about the daily avocations as before, serene in appearance, if often sad in spirit. Thomas never worked again as he had been doing before he went to London, but he became strong enough to tend his garden and his allotment carefully, and to do frequent light jobs for the Scotch tenant of Whitbury farm, whose friend he became. He was thus living almost up to the time when I first made his acquaintance.

Then, as his strength of body failed, his mind, as it seemed to me, grew keener, broader, and more penetrating. He read much, and watched with close interest the ebb and flow of home politics, looking ever for the dawn of a better day for the tillers of the soil. When the Warwickshire labourers broke out in a.s.sertion of their right to live, he hailed the event as an omen of better times. Too wise a man to be carried away by the notion that single-handed the unlettered, miserable poor could turn the world upside down, he nevertheless viewed these stirrings among the dry bones as the beginning of great changes. "I shall not live to see the land in the hands of those who till it," he would say, "but I can die in hope now. England will after all be free, and the people will have their own again. Thank G.o.d."

This belief cheered his last years, and added to the joy of his death.