Part 10 (1/2)
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 was.h.i.+ng, 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 was.h.i.+ng, 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.