The Life Of Thomas Wanless, Peasant Part 8

"Say that word again, Mary Crane," Sally demanded in a low, pa.s.sion-thrilled voice, but Mary Crane uttered never a sound.

"Say it again, will you!" Sally repeated in low tones. "Dare to call me that name again, and I'll----" But Sarah had no threat big enough for her wrath. She caught her breath sharp, and came closer to her enemy, suddenly bent down and laid hold of Mary Crane's head with both her hands, forcing her to turn up her face.

But Crane would not look at her. With a half wail, half shriek, her knees gave way under her, and she sank on the floor wriggling as if about to take a fit.

Sarah looked at her for a moment contemptuously, and then turned away, while the heroic mood was upon her, to seek an interview with Mrs.

Morgan.

That lady received the announcement of her under-nurse with her usual high-bred indifference, merely saying, "Oh, very well, you can go." But, as the girl turned away, something in her manner made Mrs. Morgan scrutinise her keenly. The girl seemed changed even to the eyes of the aristocratic lady, and, perhaps, she, too, began to suspect her, for Sally thought that she saw an expression of mingled contempt and annoyance on Mrs. Morgan's face, of which she caught a last glimpse on turning to shut the door behind her. It might have been only her own heated fancy, but, all the same, Sally's brief spell of courage was over from that moment. Happily Mary Crane vexed her no more openly, but she took her revenge in secret.

Mrs. Morgan's suspicions had been in reality so far excited as to cause her to make further inquiries. She called Mary Crane into her room one day and questioned her about "this girl, Sarah--What's her name?" Mary Crane for a little time would tell nothing. She now both hated and feared Sally Wanless, and until she could discover exactly where the girl stood with her mistress, she was not going to commit herself. Her remarks were therefore cautiously shaped at first, with a view to draw her mistress out. She prevaricated, dropped hints, and tried to measure the extent of Mrs. Morgan's knowledge before revealing her own. There was not only the girl to consider, but also the Captain. It might be more than her own place was worth to "blab on the Capting."

Either Mrs. Morgan was obtuse or ignorant, for she gave no response for some time to Mary's stream of words. "You see, 'm, as Sarah's a light sort of girl, 'm, as is allus a-runnin' after the men, 'm. She mayn't be bad, 'm, but she don't beayve proper for one in her station. I'm sure, 'm, I've told her times enough as no good id come of her upsittin' ways, and her ongoin' with the gentlemens--_a_ gentleman in particler--'as hoften shocked me, 'm."

Thus she ran on, till Mrs. Morgan, quite bewildered, exclaimed--

"But what has the girl done, then, Mary?"

"Laws, 'm, 'ow should I know, 'm. Hax herself, 'm, hax the--_a_ gentleman as you knows, 'm, knows hintimate, 'm."

"A gentleman I know intimately--what do you mean? I know no gentleman.

Surely you don't mean Captain Wiseman?"

"Well, 'm, I don't know, 'm. You see, 'm, I thought the family mightn't like it----"

"That will do, Mary, that will do. I want no more beating about the bush. Tell me, yea or nay, has Captain Wiseman been noticing this girl?"

"Yes, 'm, he 'as, 'm; but I don't think----"

"Never mind what you think, you are sure of that fact?"

"Oh, yes, 'm, quite."

"Ah, thank you; then that'll do for the present," and she motioned to Crane to leave the room.

That worthy departed not quite satisfied. She had doubts as to whether her mistress liked to know the truth, doubted also if she had done Sarah as much harm as she wished to. But she showed none of these mental clouds in the servants' hall. There, in Sally's absence, she was triumphant, and the "said she's" and "said I's" with which the tale was embellished, served to emphasise the triumph which she indicated that the interview had been to her diplomatic skill. She only confessed to one regret. Mrs. Morgan had somehow cut the interview short, "just when I was a-goin' to tell her all about it."

Mrs. Morgan, however, did not need to be told all about it. She knew the habits of her brother, and, her interest once aroused, managed to put this and that together so well as to arrive before many minutes at a tolerably shrewd conclusion. "This, then," she said to herself, "is the secret of Captain Cecil's wonderful reform." That reflection at once brought her face to face with the question--Shall I or shall I not tell my mother? It was not a question so easily answered as it seemed. Mrs.

Morgan was inclined to do it from her dislike of the Captain, who had always absorbed too much of his mother's attention--ought I to have said love?--for the good feelings of the rest of the family. But, then, this very preference made it difficult to decide. She might enrage her mother, and there were family money matters yet to settle, in the disposition of which a mother's displeasure might cause permanent changes. For these and other reasons, "too numerous to mention," Mrs.

Morgan hesitated. She would wait on events, on her mother's moods and her own; so avoiding a decision.

That seemed easiest, and yet it proved the hardest course to Mrs.

Morgan, who had quite a vulgar woman's delight in retailing scandal.

Before a week was out she found it expedient to tell all. Her mother and she held a long conference in secret on the Friday after Sally had given up her place. What they said to each other will never be known; but one decision came of it that was at once acted upon. Sarah Wanless was dismissed that night by the orders of Lady Harriet, who sent her own maid with the message. "Jane," as she was called, delivered it with curt insolence, and at the same time flung a month's wages, which Lady Harriet had likewise sent, on the table, with a significant gesture, as if to say, "You are too unclean, Sally Wanless, to be touched by a superior person like me."

When Sarah went home, which she did as soon as her small box was packed up, and told her parents that she was dismissed, her father was so indignant that he wanted to send the extra weeks' wages back. His wife, however, persuaded him that it was better to let things alone. "The money," she said, "is her right, and can do us no harm; and Sally is well out of _that_ den anyway." And Mrs. Wanless was right.

CHAPTER XIII.

THROWS A LITTLE LIGHT ON A SUBJECT SOMETIMES UNCTUOUSLY CONDESCENDED UPON BY PREACHERS OF "WORDS."

I wonder where Christians find authority for our modern treatment of illegitimacy? Preachers of all sects are never tired of telling us that they preach peace and goodwill among men. Their religion is to redeem all wrongs, to make mankind better, to lift the fallen, and cheer the broken-hearted. So at least they say, but when we look for deeds, we do not find many in this lower world. The fulfilment of the Christian ideal is prudently (?) adjourned to the next, above or below. Wherever one turns in contemplation of modern Christianity, one finds a ghastly divergence between its professions and its practice, and at no point is this more visible than in the behaviour of the Churches towards women who have sinned. Taking their tone from a corrupt society, which desires to enjoy its vices, and to prey upon its women without taking upon itself responsibilities which the poor besotted Turk even never dreams of shirking, the dispensers of the gospel of peace lead the chorus of reprobation which is heaped upon the woman, who, like the virgin mother so many of them profess to worship, bears the burden of maternity in shame and loneliness. No distinction is drawn between woman and woman--rarely or ever is the guilt of the man considered; the duties of fatherhood can be neglected by the seducer with tacit, nay, often with the full approbation of society and the Churches. But on the woman a penalty falls that is worse than death. She has yielded to the seducer, and henceforth she must be pressed down and cast out, unless--and the distinction is important--she be a sinner of the highest caste in society, when the sin may be covered with lies as with an embroidered garment; or, unless she belong to the lowest, where the difference between morality and immorality is too often nearly indistinguishable--thirteen centuries of more or less well-paid-for priestly instruction notwithstanding. Speaking broadly, however, the law of social life condemns the "unattached" woman and her offspring to obloquy and degradation, and it does this not merely without the protest of the Churches, but by their full sanction. For ages priests of all hues have arrogated to themselves the power of regulating the union of the s.e.xes; without their rites and blessings no two human beings could become man and wife. When two were thus united the universal cry was "What G.o.d hath joined together let no man put asunder." The priest, in fact, arrogated to himself the power of the Deity. His "joining" was G.o.d's, and none but his held on Earth or in Heaven. Greater blasphemy has hardly ever been committed even by priests. By this abominable fraud--this false a.s.sumption of authority--deeper social wrongs have come upon the world than from any other priestly a.s.sumption whatsoever.

The priest has habituated society to disregard all ties formed in what is called an illegitimate manner. It has sanctioned the desertion of women by their seducers, and what is even worse, the desertion of children by their fathers and mothers, for, of course, if the parents were not priest-joined, the offspring must be of the devil. A man may, according to this dogma, have lived the life of a fiend, ruining women, bringing children into the world to live or die as the poor law or hunger should order; but this is no hindrance to his obtaining the blessing of "the Church" should he one day take it into his head to submit to be married to one woman--for gain, for any reason, or none.

Scoundrel and saint are alike welcome to the priest's services and blessings if the marriage fees be paid; and with the full concurrence and blessing of any sectary in the world, a man may disjoin himself from a woman or women he has lived with for years in order to take another, if there was no marriage uniting him to these he deserted. G.o.d, of course, could not be expected to "join" those who never sought a priest's help. The whole basis of this treatment of the s.e.xes is grossly and blasphemously immoral, and the fruits of it are visible on every side. To it we owe the highly nourishing character of the "social evil"

quite as much as to man's inherent depravity, and we shall never really begin to overcome that evil until the whole of the teachings and a.s.sumptions of the sects, as applied to marriage and divorce, are swept clean out of the public mind.

Who is there to whom the history of some poor woman betrayed and deserted is not known--a woman, it may be, tender-hearted and true, as worthy of wifehood as any of her s.e.x? Did society pity that woman? Have you pitied her? Perhaps, but would you not also gather up your garments and pa.s.s by on the other side, if you met her in public? Habit is so strong, you will say in excuse; yes, yes, habit is strong, and the woman is weak. Why should one heed her? She brought her fate on herself. Leave her to perish. The man she loved has left her, and the world treats her no worse than he. If her own s.e.x spits upon her and hisses at her, what can man do? These be the thoughts of most men over broken lives, and most readers may therefore feel impatient that I should linger over the ruin and fall of a poor peasant la.s.s. Yet what can I do? my task is to write the history of this family; its sorrows and failings, its burdens and tears, are all that it has wherewith to claim the world's attention.

And to my thinking, they mean much. Their lives were real to them, as yours, reader, is to you, and they had a part in making up the pitiful social life of this decrepit old England possibly just as high as yours.

Therefore must I ask you to turn aside with me for a moment to look again on Sally Wanless, when she reappears from her seclusion--a shame mother, with a babe born to sorrow and shame in her arms. I have said reappears, but she has not yet ventured to meet the, to her, scathing gaze of the people in the village street. She steals into the little garden behind her father's cottage, and there, in the soft September afternoons, you would find her seated beneath the shade of an old apple tree, face to face with her doom, and looking at it as one who has no hope.

In some people the soul wakes late; some, indeed, appear to pa.s.s through the world without its ever awakening. They may be bright-hearted people, full of animal life and spirits, capable of much work and a few sacrifices, yet they have never risen up to full consciousness of the meaning of life, to its higher impulses, and its terrible risks and obligations. No great inward commotion has ever visited them; they vegetate tamely on till they reach the grave. Others, like Thomas Wanless, awake early to consciousness of the mystery and burden of existence, and battle with hopes and fears their lives long.

Would that his daughter had also found the realities of living ere the curse of life had come upon her! But she did not. Her awakening came too late. While it was possible she hid from herself the meaning of her fall, and refused to look at the awful questions which for the first time surged in upon her soul. It was not possible for long. When the wail of her infant first broke on her ear she awoke and was stricken with the full consciousness of what she had lost. Her past life stood out before her as something apart; its hopes belonged to another state of existence, to a life in which her future could have no part. All lonely at the heart she had borne the pains of motherhood, and a feeble infant lay by her side bearing witness against her now and evermore. No father welcomed it. The sound of its feeble cry brought a forsakenness about the mother's heart nothing could remove. In vain her mother soothed her. In vain her true-hearted father, bravely hiding away his shame and grief, took the little one in his arms and fondled it with a fatherhood that a.s.sumed all the sin and all the responsibilities of his child. Sarah could not be comforted. Blank despair took possession of her. Why was she not dead? Why did the child live? Surely they would be both better dead and buried out of sight for ever? This was the under tone of her thoughts now, save when at times, and as she grew strong again, gusts of pa.s.sion like her father's would sweep over her soul.

Then she felt for moments as if she could compel the world to stop and witness her revenge. Should a fit like this master her, what might one so desperate not do? Hers was a soul awake and in prison, but if it burst its bonds?

Let the gay and frivolous, the light talkers, the young and giddy, the tempter and the tempted, stop to look upon this ruin. Is it a small thing, do you think, for a man to have the undoing of this woman and child laid to his charge. He pa.s.ses in the world unharmed, nay, admired, probably, the very women in secret whispering admiringly of his prowess.

But does that make his guilt the less? Is there no retributive justice d.o.g.g.i.ng his heels, from which all the glories and adulations of earth cannot shield him? Look at the history of such men, and be they kings or carters, you will find that they become degraded wretches, moral abortions, repulsive ruins of humanity, as the result of their crimes against woman. Yea, the woman is avenged, though only after death comes the judgment.

But Sally Wanless thought not of revenge, that calm September evening, on which my memory pictures her through the mirror of other eyes, seated, half in shadow, half in sunlight, beneath the old apple tree.

Her baby lies asleep on her lap, the sunlight glints through the leaves on her hair, and flickers now and then across the infant's face--but she heeds neither child nor light. A far-away look is in her eyes--a look that tells of longing, for what will never be hers again on earth. The evening sun-glow throws into relief the pale, pinched face with its unresigned hungry look, for in that face there is no welcome to the sober autumn warmth. The dull fire of Sally's eyes is the fire of an unquenchable pain. Where is there room in her life for joy any more? Her eye does not trace heaven's battlemented walls, in those grand ma.s.ses of white clouds--the blue expanse beyond is not eloquent of the near world unseen. No; her thoughts are self-centred; she never looks upward. Day after day she sits here, still and silent, as one stunned. Her spirit seems at such times as if beaten to the earth, never to rise again. The child sometimes fails to interest or rouse her. When its wails demand attention, she will fondle and kiss it much, as if it were made of wood.

Alas; poor Sally, winsome la.s.s. How many such as you go aching through the world, broken-hearted, and forsaken,--waiting for the judgment to come, when, as they still, perhaps, lingeringly hope, the wrong shall be righted for evermore.

Her parents yearned after their daughter, and yet feared to break in rudely upon her brooding spirit. Neighbours came too, full of kindly promises and curiosity, ready to speak volumes of comforting words; but Sally shrank from contact with them,--preferred the garden seat, or her own garret window.

Thomas became broken-hearted about his child. He could not get her to so much as look at him. Often times he laid his hands softly on her bent head, and whispered--"Sally, my la.s.s, cheer up a bit. Don't break mother's heart and mine, by taking on so." But Sally merely wept, and bent still lower over her babe. They could not get her to go out during the day--only at night would she creep along by the hedge-rows, in the most unfrequented paths, accompanied by her mother, and hiding the child as much as possible, beneath her shawl, when it was not asleep at home.

Her morbid fancy made her think that everyone knew her shame. She could not see people talking together without a rush of blood to her face, as if she felt the talk must be of her.

And how fared it all this time with her seducer? As the world elects, it shall always fare. From it he had neither frown nor word of rebuke.

Those that knew his sin thought as little about it as he did, and that was apparently never at all. He took no more notice of Sarah Wanless and the infant girl she had borne to him, than if they had been dogs. Nay, far less, for they were hateful to his selfish, ease-loving nature, and therefore he rigorously banished them from his sight and thoughts. Just as before, he took his "pleasure" coming and going to town, and living the life of sottish ease, as became a man of fashion and a court soldier. At the Vicarage his welcome was just as warm as ever, although every soul within its walls was quite aware of the ruin he had brought on the poor peasant's daughter. Mrs. Codling's verdict naturally was, that it served the gipsy right, and and her father too. He was always an insolent fellow, who never showed proper respect for the Olympians, and this would perhaps take down his pride a bit. This was the view of the matter insinuated to Adelaide, who had become "skittish" when the news first reached her ears, thereby, however, increasing the ardour with which the captain followed her. Mrs. Codling had quite made up her mind, that through Adelaide she would succeed in catching the Captain as a son-in-law, and therefore took occasion to put "matters in their proper light."

"Of course, my dear," she would say, "we shall have to get rid of the girl and her brat, for it might be unpleasant to have them in the parish; but the Captain can manage all that, never fear, and if the whole nest of them remove to another part of the country, the parish will have a good riddance. I daresay a few pounds will do it, for all that old rascal's pride."

Adelaide was soon satisfied, and soon, also, her flippant tongue had disseminated this view of the case all over the parish; for Adelaide would talk to the housemaid when no better listener was to be had.

CHAPTER XIV.

BRINGS THE DOUBTLESS RELUCTANT READER ONCE MORE INTO CONTACT WITH A "GALLANT" WOOER, AND GIVES FURTHER PROOF OF THE DIFFICULTY WHICH BESETS ALL ATTEMPTS TO HARMONISE TRUTH AND FASHIONABLE "CHRISTIAN"

RESPECTABILITY.