Part 4 (1/2)

His visit did Thomas much good, and he bore his trials more patiently henceforth, though the bitterness of his heart at times nearly maddened him. I can never forget the description which he gave me in after days of the agonies suffered by him during those horrible six months. We were seated together in his little garden one September evening, the sun was far down in the west, the ruddy glow of a calm, bright autumn evening fell athwart Wanless's grey, worn face, lighting it with a sober brilliance that fitted well the fixed look of sadness that sat on it as he then told me of that dark time. His voice was calm for the most part, although full of subdued pa.s.sion; and the impression his narrative made on me was so deep that I can almost give you his very words.

”At first,” said he, ”I felt like a caged wild beast, and could do nothing but chafe. The night in the keeper's out-house, where the villain kept me to save himself trouble, with both hands and feet cruelly tied, had been bad enough; and the nights and days in Leamington lock-up were hard to bear, but a kind of hope sustained me, and I did not fully comprehend what loss of liberty was till I lay in Warwick Jail. For three nights after I entered that h.e.l.l upon earth I did not sleep a wink. The very air I breathed seemed to choke me. Sometimes I felt so mad that I could hardly keep from das.h.i.+ng my head against the walls of the cell. Had I been alone perhaps I might have done it, but there were five beside myself cooped up in a den not much bigger than my kitchen, and in the darkness I was for a time horribly afraid lest one or other of these men should do me an injury. Though in one sense eager for death, I did not like being killed; and when not raging I was trembling with fear. It was nervousness, no doubt, but you can hardly wonder when I tell you what my neighbours were. One was a burglar from Birmingham, sentenced to transportation for stealing a coat from somebody's hall; two were miners from Dudley way, ”doing” sixty days for kicking a chum and breaking his leg, another was a wild, brutish-like day labourer, who had got six months at last a.s.sizes for cutting his wife's throat, not quite to the death, and the last was a poor, hungry youth of a tailor's apprentice, who had got the same sentence for stealing some cloth. We were a strange lot, and I feared these men in the darkness. If one moved, my heart leapt to my mouth; and the horrible language in which some of them indulged, made my flesh creep. That wild labourer especially terrified me. What if the murderous frenzy was to come upon him, and he should try to throttle me in the dark.

”After a few nights, exhausted nature a.s.serted herself, and I slept.

Then other thoughts arose in my heart that were still worse to bear--thoughts about my wife and family. Sarah had been allowed to speak to me for a minute or two before I was removed from the Leamington Courthouse to jail, and she then told me that Jack and f.a.n.n.y caught cold _that_ night, and threatened dropsy. Lucy, also, had had a relapse of the fever. Poor woman, she looked so broken-hearted and worn-out like, and I could say nothing, still less do anything now. 'Oh, Tummas, Tummas, that it should a' coom to this' she cried, and wept bitterly behind her thin old shawl. It was the shawl I married her in, sir; and I thought on the past and the future till I, too, broke down and cried like a child. But what good was that to her; to either of us? Well; I couldn't help it.

”Then she picked up a bit, and tried to cheer me, as women will when the worst comes. She told me that Mrs. Robins was very kind, and had come to look after the children for her that day, having none of her own, and no fear of the infection, and she was sure that the neighbours would never see her want. That was some comfort at the time; but once I came to myself in jail the thought that I was now helpless, that my family might be dying and I unable to reach them, raised anew the agony in my mind. I saw them gathered round our Sally's bed weeping for their absent father.

My wife's weary looks and thin white face haunted me in the night seasons far worse than the wife mutilator. What could neighbours do for her in such a strait; what could I do now? The thought of my helplessness came over me with waves of agonising self-abas.e.m.e.nt and disgust, till my nerves seemed to crack and my brain spin round. Often did I stuff my sleeve into my mouth to stop myself from crying out as I lay tossing on the floor of the den. I would beat my head with my clenched hands till the sparks danced in my eyes, and groan till my neighbours muttered curses through their sleep. Oh, I thought, if I could but get an hour with my little ones, to see wee Sally and the baby in their bed, to watch poor Jack and Fan, and help the worn out mother.

An hour! nay, half an hour, only five minutes! G.o.d, it was unbearable; it was h.e.l.l to be caged like this!

”And what had I done to be thus torn from my wife and children, and made to consort with brutal criminals? What had I done? Killed three rabbits, vermin that curse G.o.d's earth and devour the bread of the poor. They belonged to n.o.body any more'n rats or mice or weasels, and did n.o.body good in this world. Why, the man that had nearly killed his wife was not harder treated than me. What then was my crime? Was I indeed a criminal?

I asked myself again and again, and the answer came--'No, Tom Wanless, but you were worse; you were a fool. You knew the power of the landlords; you knew that to them the rabbit was a sacred animal, and that they could punish you if they caught you. You were a fool ever to put yourself in their clutches.' Ah yes, there was the sting of it. How could I hope to escape doom when all the world except the labourers were on one side.

”But though I saw I had been a fool; that made me no better in my mind; rather worse; for, as I tossed and raved in my heart, I took to cursing squire and parson: I cursed, too, the land of my birth, and ended by cursing the G.o.d who made me. Ay, that did I. In the darkness I mocked at Him, I swore at Him, and told Him that I wouldn't believe there was a G.o.d at all. Why, if He lived, did he suffer scoundrels to call themselves His chosen people, and mock Him by their chattering prayers and mumblings all the time that they lived only to oppress the poor.

Life was a curse if that was right.

”Well,” Thomas continued, after a short pause, during which he leant back and watched the changing tints of gold flitting across the western sky, ”well, that mood also pa.s.sed, and after the old captain had been to see me I got a little quieter. But the jailers did not make life easy for me, I can tell you. Because I was silent, speaking little, eating little, and hardly fit for the task they set me upon that weary treadmill, they gave me a taste of the whip many a time, and abused me for a sullen gallows bird, but I paid no heed.

”Within a fortnight after my punishment began, little Tom brought me word that two of my children, Jack and Lucy, were dead, and that f.a.n.n.y was not expected to live. When I heard this news I laughed a bitter laugh, and said, 'Thank G.o.d, some good has been done. The squires won't imprison them, anyway!' My boy looked terrified for a moment, and then fell a-weeping bitterly. The sight of him crouching at my feet, and quivering in pa.s.sionate grief, brought me a bit to. A vision of my dear little ones, of my dying wee Fan, swept over me; my heart yearned for them, and I mingled my tears with my son's. I charged him to be kind to mother, and tried to comfort him. Poor lad, poor lad! He is in Australia now, and has a farm of his own. The sorrow of that time is past for him long ago.”

Here my old friend paused, wiping the tears from his eyes furtively, and sighing softly to himself. The dying glow of the sunset was now on his face, gleaming in his silvery hair, and making his sad but animated features s.h.i.+ne with a soft glory. I sat still and gazed at him with feelings too strong for speech. After a little he turned to me with a smile, and said:--

”Yes, my friend, that's all pa.s.sed, and many sorrows beside, nor do I now curse G.o.d as I look back upon them. But I cannot tell you more to-night. I didn't think that I should have been moved so much by recalling that old story. Let us go indoors, the night is growing chilly.”

Future conversations gave me most of the particulars of that time, but I cannot harrow the reader's feelings with a full recital of all that Thomas Wanless felt and suffered in these six months of misery. Three of his children died while he chafed and toiled in Warwick Jail. The heart-stricken mother alone received their dying words, heard their last farewell. Kind neighbours tried to comfort her. The parson's wife even called, and said, ”Poor woman, I'm afraid you've had too many children to bring up. I'll see if the vicar can spare you a few s.h.i.+llings from the poor box;” but the s.h.i.+llings never came, much to Thomas's satisfaction in after days. Perhaps Codling thought the family altogether too reprobate for his charity.

It would have gone hard indeed with Mrs. Wanless and the little ones spared to her but for old Captain Hawthorn. Though verging on seventy, and by no means strong, no single week elapsed all that winter when his cheery voice was not heard in the cottage. Often he came twice a week, but never with any ostentation of charity. On the contrary, he went so far the other way as to pretend to take a bond over the cottage for money, professedly lent to the family, and without which they must have gone into the workhouse. He never, perhaps, felt so like a hypocrite in his life as he did when he took this bond to the jail for Thomas to sign. Young Tom was put back to his work on the home farm, and his wages raised on some pretence or other to six s.h.i.+llings a week. The dry, old man, so hard and repellant, had, after all, a human heart in him that my Lord Bishop of Worcester might have envied had he ever experienced any desire for such an organ. More true sympathy with distress was shown by this hardened old Voltarian since this family had attracted his notice than by all the squires of the district and the parsons to boot. It had not yet become fas.h.i.+onable for the latter to rehea.r.s.e deeds of philanthropy in pedantic garments. Hawthorn's fault was not want of heart or of sympathy, but a self-centredness which prevented him from seeing his duty, except when, as in this instance, it was forced upon him. Yet, after all, what could he have done to help the poor around him that would not in some way have redounded to their hurt? Charity doles would have demoralised them more than their hard lot did; and any opening of the door for them to help themselves would have brought hatred, contumely, and perhaps real injury to them and him. He could not raise wages by his fiat, nor could he break up his land and distribute it to the people. All the laws of the country, as well as the prejudices of ”society,” were against him, if he had ever thought of so wild a project; which I do not suppose he ever did. He sat apart and mocked at a world with which he had no sympathy; whose hollowness, self-seeking, and cruelty, hid beneath infinite hypocrisies, he thoroughly understood.

And this good, at least, has to be recorded of him, that he saved the family of Thomas Wanless from want, by consequence, also, in all probability, saving Thomas himself from becoming an abandoned Ishmaelite. The sight of his family beggared, homeless, and in the workhouse, either would have driven him reckless or broken his heart.

From that sight, at least, he was saved; and Thomas has often told me that the conduct of the old squire during these six months did more to revive hope in his heart and keep him from losing all faith in G.o.d or man, than any other single event of his life. Yet had his heart bitterness enough.

”I remember,” he said, one night as we conversed together; ”I remember the morning I left jail. It was a warm, May morning, and the air was so fresh and sweet that the first breath of it made me feel quite giddy with joy. 'Free! free! I am free!' I whispered softly to myself, and with difficulty refrained from capering about the road like a madman, as the joyous thought surged through my heart. It lasted only for a few moments. Pain took hold of the heels of my joy as usual. I was a man disgraced. Why should I be glad to get out of jail? Were not its forbidding, gloomy walls the best shelter left for one like me? Why should I be glad? The law of the land had branded me a criminal; let the law makers enjoy paying for their work.

”Ah, no; disgraced as I was, filled with bitter pa.s.sionate hate of those above me as my heart might be, I was not yet ready to stoop to deliberate crime as a mode of revenge. The memory of my lost children and my lonely, heart-broken wife stole into my heart and brought the tears to my eyes. The four that were left to me would be waiting on this May morning for my home coming. I would go home.

”So I started; but when I reached the castle bridge my heart again failed me. I was weak through long confinement, ill-usage, and want of food, for the messes served to us in that jail were often worse than I would have given to my pig. The very thought of meeting a village neighbour terrified me. My limbs shook, and I crept through a gap in the fence, resolved to hide till night and steal home in the darkness. For a little while I sat behind a bush at the water's edge, feeling a coward, but wholly unable to scold myself for it. Then I crept along the bank of the Avon towards Grimscote, till I reached a clump of osiers, into which I plunged. The ground was very damp, and here and there almost swampy; but presently I found a dry mound, and there I lay down, buried from all eyes. How long I lay I cannot tell, for I paid no heed to time, though I gradually became calmer. Once again I was in contact with nature. The air was full of the music of birds, and the chirp of insects among the gra.s.s sounded almost like the movement of life in the very ground itself. A sweet smell of hawthorn blossom came to me from some old trees close by, and now and then I heard the plash of oars on the river, and voices came to me sweet and clear off the water. Gradually I became more hopeful. Life was all around me; the bushes themselves seemed moved by it as I lay beneath their shade. Behind me the traffic of the high road made a constant rattle, and beyond the river I heard the bleating of lambs. And life somehow came back to me also. I arose with new hopes in my breast. All could not yet be lost to me, I somehow felt; and, at any rate, I would go home, for I began to be very hungry.

”I often stopped on the way with weariness and faint-heartedness, but did not again turn back, and by two o'clock in the afternoon I reached my own cottage. My wife welcomed me with a burst of crying. I learnt from her that she had begun to dread that I had done something rash. She and the little ones had gone to meet me in the morning as far as the castle bridge, which they must have reached soon after I lay down among the willows. There they sat for a while hoping that I would come, but seeing nothing of me they crept back again with hearts sad enough, you may be sure. I was not long behind them, and my wife soon brightened enough to be able to eat some dinner with me; but my heart smote me for being so selfish and unkind as to go and hide as if no one had to be considered but myself.”

Such in faint outline was Thomas's account of his release from prison.

His meeting with his family was sad beyond description. In the short six months of his absence three of his little ones had been put under the sod. Out of a family of eight in all he had now but four left. A great mercy that it was so, some will say; and possibly they may be right. The world's goods are so ill distributed that death is for many the only blessing left. Nevertheless, I question if the sorrow of the labourer at the loss of his children was not keener than that of many who need not fear a want of bread for their offspring. He had toiled and suffered for all the eight, and the love that grows up in the heart through such discipline as his is akin to the deepest and holiest pa.s.sion known to man. Thomas and his wife mourned for their dead to their own life's end, because the little ones had been part of their life. Is it so with you, pert censor of the miserable poor?

Though sorrowing, Thomas had yet no time to nurse his sorrow. The world had to be faced again, and work to be found. For sentimental griefs and morbid wailings in the world's ear the Wanlesses had no time. At first Thomas got some jobs from Mr. Hawthorn, but he soon saw that they were jobs mostly created on purpose for him, and he could not bear the thought of living on charity, no matter how disguised. Therefore, he began to hunt about for odd work in the neighbourhood, and found much difficulty in getting it. His recent imprisonment told against him everywhere, if not in keeping work from his hands, at all events in low pay for the work. The farmers had now got their feet on his neck, and took it out of him, as they alone knew how; for the brutalised slave is always the cruellest of slave-drivers. But Thomas fought on, and for the best part of a year contrived to exist with the help that young Tom's wages gave. He did no more; nay, not always so much; for he and his wife sometimes wanted their own dinners that their children might have enough. Still he existed; lived through the year somehow and was thankful, notwithstanding the fact that he had made no progress in paying off his debt to the old Captain. ”He can take the cottage, Thomas,” said his wife. ”Someone will pay him rent enough for it, though we can't; but we can get a hovel somewhere.”

He was spared this last sacrifice, for about this time old Hawthorn died, and a sealed packet addressed to Thomas Wanless was found among his papers. When the labourer came to open this, he found that it contained his bond with the signature torn off, a receipt in full for the money advanced, and a 20 note. On a slip of paper was written in the Captain's scraggy, trembling hand, ”Don't mention this to a living soul, Tom Wanless, or by G.o.d I'll haunt you.--E.H.” Thus the scorned infidel was soft-hearted and characteristic to the last. His estate pa.s.sed to a cousin, who soon gave the tenants cause to remember how good the old Captain had been. And once more he had kept the labourer's heart from breaking. The deliverance from debt which this packet brought, and the prodigious wealth a 20 note appeared to be to Thomas, renewed his courage and made him resolve to strike further afield in search of better paid labour. Railway making was at its height all over the country, and he had often thought of becoming a navvy. Now he decided to be one if he could get work on the line down Worcester way. A bit of that line came within fifteen miles of Ashbrook, and he might therefore see his family now and then at least Young Tom was to stay at home, and the 5s. a-week, to which his wages was reduced after old Hawthorn's death, would help to keep house till work was found by his father. The 20 was not to be touched till the very last extremity, and in the meantime Thomas put it in as a deposit in a savings bank at Stratford-on-Avon. He would not deposit it in Warwick lest questions might be asked, and the Captain's dying command be in consequence disobeyed.

The new plans succeeded better almost than Thomas had hoped. He got work on the railway; it was very hard work, but the wages were good; at first he only got 18s. per week, and he began by stinting himself in order to send 10s. of this home; but he soon found that to be a mistake. His work demanded full vigour of body, and to be in full vigour he must be well fed. The other men had meat of some kind three times a day, and Thomas followed their example, with the best results. Not only did he stand by his work with the rest, but he displayed such energy and intelligence that within a few weeks he obtained charge of the work in a deep cutting at 28s. per week. Of this he saved from 12s. to 14s. a-week, after paying for clothes, lodgings, and food. It seemed very little, and he grudged much the cost of his own living; but there was no help for it.

Besides, what he saved now was more than all he earned in Ashbrook, except for a few weeks during harvest. Much reason had he to thank the dairyman's wife for feeding him in his youth so as to fit him now for a navvy's toil.