Part 13 (1/2)
”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, s.h.i.+vering 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 Warwicks.h.i.+re 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 s.h.i.+vering 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 vanis.h.i.+ng 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 wors.h.i.+pping 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.