Thomas Wanless set out for London, within a week after his daughter's disappearance, on a dull, cold, January morning. His farewells were cheerful, but his heart was downcast enough, and the further the slow, crawling train took him from home the heavier his heart became. It was dark long before he reached Paddington, to be there turned out upon the murky bewilderment of London streets, knowing not where to turn his footsteps.
Mechanically he followed the string of people and cabs flowing out of the station into Praed Street, the lamps of which showed faintly through damp, smoke-charged air. Then he paused irresolute. A sense of loneliness and hopelessness stole over him, intensified probably by hunger, for he had eaten nothing save a crust of bread and cheese since early morning. He was as one lost, as helpless in the crush of whirling humanity as a wind-driven clot of foam on a storm-tossed sea. Amid all this hurry and bustle of human life, where could he go? how find lodgings? Fairly overwhelmed by the sense of desolation, he leant against a wall to try and collect his thoughts, and mentally prayed for courage and guidance.
For some minutes he stood thus self-absorbed, when a rather kindly voice, speaking almost in his ear, roused him with a
"Good evening, mate. Be you a stranger?"
"Yes," Thomas answered, looking up. "Yes, I came up from Warwick to-day, and never was in London before."
"Be ye in want o' work then, or not?" the voice demanded.
"Why, yes, if I can get work I'll be glad of it; but it wasn't that exactly as brought me here. You see——." But Thomas checked himself, and turned a scrutinising gaze on his interlocutor. He saw a rather grimy, ill-clad, thick-set man, whose face seemed as kindly as his voice, though its expression was barely discernible, except by the eyes, which shone brightly in the dull, yellow light of the neighbouring lamp. By the sack-like covering which the man wore on his back, and by his be-smudged appearance generally, Thomas judged that he must be a labourer among coals. He was poor at any rate, and he looked kindly; so after a brief inspection, to which the stranger submitted in silence, and as a matter of course, Thomas resumed—
"You see, I'm come up to look for a lass of mine as has runned away."
"Ah!" ejaculated the stranger. "Ah!" and then he stopt with his mouth open, as if embarrassed by this sudden confidence. But he soon recovered himself, and after relieving his feelings with a "Well, I never! Who'd a thowt it?" came back to practical business, by asking Thomas if he knew of a bed anywhere.
Thomas said "No."
"Well, then," answered the man, "you just come along with me. You ain't likely to find the gal to-night, and you can't stand there till mornin'! Perhaps my missus can give you a shake-down in the corner somewhere."
Thomas was only too glad to accept the stranger's offer, and, hoisting his bundle of clothes over his shoulder, with his stick through the knot, he at once assented, and followed wheresoever the other led. They trudged along for a good half-hour, mostly in silence, for Thomas was in no mood for talking, and his companion appeared to have no gifts in that direction. At length they reached the door of a dingy, tumble-down house in that now happily abolished slum, Agar Town, and into this the coal-heaver turned, saying—
"Mind the steps, friend. The stairs is rather out of repair." In this rickety, filthy, old tenement the coal-heaver rented two rooms on the third floor. He had a wife and three poor sallow-looking children, who were frightened when they saw a strange man enter with their father. The man introduced his wife as Mrs. Godbehere, and said his own name was William. They invited Thomas, who in turn had given his name, to share their supper, and he contributed to the feast the remainder of his bread and cheese. Consulted about a bed, Mrs. Godbehere declared that it was impossible for her to give Thomas one, and he agreed with her. She knew, however, a neighbour who had a lodging to let; 2s. 6d. a-week she charged for a small room with a bed in it—the lodger to find and cook his own food. In this room Thomaswas ultimately installed, and right thankful he was to find a roof above his head in that appalling city. The walk along Marylebone and Euston Roads had impressed him more profoundly than ever with a sense of the vastness of London. It was like a first lesson in the meaning of infinity, and it struck him with a feeling of dread. Oft times did he ask himself that night whether he was not, indeed, mad in attempting to trace Sarah in such a sea of human beings. But mad or not, he resolved that his task should not be lightly abandoned.
Thus occupied he passed a restless night, and got up weary next morning. His bed, he found to his cost, was not over clean, and it was with a depressing sense of comfortlessness that he went to seek the Godbeheres. The coal-heaver had already gone to his work, but Mrs. Godbehere directed him to an eating-house near by, where he went and had some breakfast. Refreshed a little, he forthwith started on his quest. He would wander the myriad streets of London till he found his lost one, he had said to himself.
And day after day, night after night, he did wander hither and thither through the most frequented thoroughfares of London, returning late and worn-out to his miserable lodging. A growing hopelessness lay at his heart, and made him sometimes almost unable to drag his limbs past each other, but he held on with a dogged persistence that was almost sullen. Through Godbehere's friendliness, and the pressure of his own heart agony, he had scraped acquaintance with sundry policemen, but they could give him no effective help. One wouldsuggest that he ought to keep a close watch about the Strand, another mentioned Oxford Street and the Circus, or the Haymarket. All agreed, in their callous sort of way, that "if she had followed a man to London, she was a'most sure to find her way to the streets before long." Thomas did not doubt it. He knew the pride of his daughter too well to doubt it. Rather than bear among her kindred the brand which her unfallen sisterhood would put upon her, she would face a life of open shame, where none could cast stones at her. So Thomas held on his way, but never got a glimpse of his lost one. His means were nearly exhausted, for, pinch as he might, it costs money to live in London. Yet he would not surrender. No, he would work. But how could he get work—he, a mere street loafer, and as lonely in London as if it had been a desert. London with its hurrying crowds, its rush of vehicles, its roar and bustle, and flowing lights, fairly broke down his imagination. He felt himself a helpless atom amid a mass of atoms that knew nothing of his misery, and grew too weak-hearted almost to seek for work. But for his quest, he felt—sometimes even said to himself—that he could lie down in the gutter and die. Possibly his wretched lodging and the sleepless nights he had passed in his pain had much to do with this utter collapse of mind. I cannot decide, but he has told me that never till that time did he realise the sustaining power of a fixed idea. "I came to find Sally," he said, "and I held to that." For that he braved not only hunger and cold, but the horrors of the night in the most abandoned thoroughfares ofLondon. For that he mingled in the crowds of educated and other roughs that frequented theatre doors, and the doors of the coffee-houses and prostitute dens in the Haymarket and Gardens. For that he endured cursing and foul language inconceivable, stood to see men and women hurrying themselves into worse than a fiend's condition by their self-indulgence and sin. Into low dancing rooms he penetrated, often to be bundled out neck and crop as a spy, or at best to be horrified by filthy jokes or still more filthy exhibitions of obscenity. That very Agar Town, in which he lived, he again and again explored, facing its stenches and miseries, its wantonness and riot, and worst of all, its terrible crowds of weary, sin-rotting, broken-hearted, down-beaten, and unfortunate humanity. Often did he see women there peering out of their dingy, rag-stuffed windows, that bore traces of having once been as fair as rash Sally. Nay, the very rag-pickers who lodged in its garrets, Godbehere assured him, had many of them once been "flaunting women of the town." Women of the town, indeed, and was not the town doomed? Thomas thought that it was. To him London was already hell. The fumes of abominations choked his mental senses, and made him long to escape.
Nevertheless, his mind was fixed. He could not go without his child, and in order to carry out his purpose he must work. By the friendly help of Godbehere he ultimately obtained employment in the coal yard at Paddington-wages 2s. 6d. per day. He felt rich and strong for his task henceforth, and as soon as he couldhe removed to a rather better lodging near his work. At a waste, as he considered it, of several evenings' lodging-seeking, he found a small clean room in the neighbourhood of Lindengrove, for which, including a plain breakfast, he paid 5s. 6d. a-week. His landlady was an elderly widow who kept three lodgers, and she rather demurred to Thomas's demand for a latch-key, so that he might go in and out at nights as he pleased, but his sad, earnest face, and his remark that he was looking for a lost daughter, conquered her fears. Thomas had his key, and felt a kind of thankfulness that if he did find Sally he could now bring her to a better refuge than the vermin-filled hole in Agar Town.
Five weeks had well-nigh passed, and Thomas was no nearer his object, to all appearance, than the day he arrived in London. But now that he had work he felt more assured of his purpose, and therefore less sad. So he sent home cheery letters to his wife, bidding her hope yet for Sally, telling her he felt that God would not forsake her or them. All his letters his wife got read to her by the schoolmaster, and then passed them on to Jane. Money he would have sent, but could not. All that was left after paying his food and the clothes he needed for his work he spent in his quest. For work did not cause him to abate his vigilance, nor did it much reduce his wanderings. As soon as the yard closed he hurried home, changed his clothes, swallowed a cup of tea, and, sometimes on foot, sometimes on the top of an omnibus, he made his way to the usual haunts of vice. There he would wander, haunting theatre doors, peering into refreshmentbars, and sometimes spending sixpence to get inside a low music hall. The sights he saw froze his very heart's blood with horror, and he often asked himself—Is all this vice, then, the product of our civilisation? Where is the Christianity in the habits of a people who permit tens of thousands of their fellow beings to rot and perish as a matter of course, and prate about the social evil in their sleek respectable way as if it was a dispensation of heaven? How many of these poor girls, whose lives had been blasted, who now brazenly mocked "society," and laid snares for the destruction of its darlings, had mothers, perhaps, even now weeping for them in secret? As he thought of these things he felt as if he could wander, like Jonah, through the streets, preaching the doom of this city of Sodom, whose streets already savoured of the bottomless pit.
Thoughts of this kind were brought home to him with terrible force one night that he saw Adelaide Codling. He was standing watching the play-goers leaving Drury Lane, when his eye suddenly caught the face of that girl amid a group of women and "swells," amongst the latter of whom was Captain Wiseman. She was showily dressed, and had a profusion of glaring jewellery scattered about her person, and she was talking fast, and laughing in a loud, defiant sort of way. But Wanless could see that she was not happy. As she drew near where he stood he could mark the restlessness of her eye, and the nervous boldness of her manner, and he pitied her. Is this what she has come to already? he thought to himself, and involuntarily shivered. Ah! if his own sweet lass was now like this, could he reclaim her? Would it not be too late?Adelaide Codling passed on, unconscious of the presence of her fellow-villager, saw not the pleading look that crossed his face, the eager step forward he took as if to speak with her. She entered a cab with Wiseman and two others, and disappeared from sight.
The eagerness of Thomas to find his lost one was intensified after that night. Hardly a night-watchman in all the district escaped his importunities, and from most of them the old man met with a rough kindness that soothed him even in his absorbing grief. One old sergeant he met in the Strand, and who had more than once listened to his descriptions and his queries, advised him to alter his beat. "There are a great many haunts of streetwalkers," he said, "besides the Strand and the Haymarket. Why not try the south side of the river, or up Islington way? There is the East-end, too, and Oxford Street and Holborn. Yes, none knew where a girl may get to, once she cuts adrift in London. Such heaps of them takes to the streets nowadays, that you can find some in every thoroughfare in London."
Wanless felt the observation true, alas! too true, but what could he do? His means would not allow him to search the whole city. He took a wider range, however, going by turns to one part of the town, now another, sometimes as far as the Angel and Upper Street, Islington, sometimes south to the Elephant and Castle, and the vice haunts of Walworth and the Borough. Occasionally, too, he searched the bridges across the river, but always with a sort of dread that his doing so was a confession that he believed his girl capable of drowning herself.
The winter was moving away thus, and Thomas Wanless was rapidly losing his vigour. Hard work and constant vigils, coupled with a sore heart, and a weak appetite, pulled the man down, and by February he had to confess that the long walks were too much for his strength. Mercifully, the weather often made it impossible for him to go out at night, and when it did clear up, he contented himself with going somewhere to watch the stream of people passing by. "I will wait," he said to himself, "for my darling to come to me." He could not even stand very long, but usually sought the rest of a friendly doorstep, and at times a recess on a bridge, watching, with tender wistfulness, the stream of life hurrying on around him. Strange to say, he had more than once seen Adelaide Codling since that night at the theatre, and somehow that always gave him hope. Her face seemed to say to him, "Your daughter cannot be far away."
Often the "unfortunates" came and talked to him, not rudely in their wantonness—alas! poor, forsaken waifs—forsaken by all save God—but soberly, as if moved to speak to this still, sad-eyed, grey-faced old man, who looked out on the world so keenly, and withal, with suchtenderness in his look. They would tell him fragments of their stories—sad enough all, and wonderfully alike—tales of seduction, and heartless desertion, varied only by the degree of turpitude usually exhibited in the man. At one time it would be the tale of a light-headed girl, seduced by her master—a married man—who huddled her out of sight, to hide his shame. Many came from garrison towns, the seduced of the officers there; quiet country parsonages gave their quota of girls educated to feel, and therefore hurrying the faster to their doom, when once cut off from their families by the devices of their betrayers. One woman excited Thomas's pity deeply. Though wasted and fast dying, she still had traces of great beauty when he first met her, leaning wearily on the parapet of Waterloo Bridge, looking out on the water below. She flashed defiance—the defiance of a hunted being—at him when he first spoke to her, but he soon won her heart, and got her story. A fair blonde, oval-faced English girl, she had been comely to look upon, and was wholesome at the heart even yet, for all her misery. She was the victim of a parson, now high in the counsels of the church. The villain was but a curate when he seduced her—the only child of her mother, and she a widow. He promised to marry her, of course, and wiled his way to her heart. Then when he had got all he wanted, and found that she was with child, he cast her off, daring her to lay the babe to his paternity, and spreading a story to the effect that he had found other lovers at her heels. Broken hearted, she buried her head and obeyed, but the shame killed her mother. "I couldnot die," the daughter said to Wanless; "I have often tried to kill myself, but fear keeps me back now, after all that's past, and it kept me back then. My child died, thank Heaven! I was alone in the world. I drifted to London seeking work, and found it hard to get. When I offered myself for a servant's place, people said I was too well educated, and suspected that something must be wrong. I could have taught in a school, perhaps, but had no one to recommend me. I was hungry; I hated mankind, and cursed them. I said I would betray and destroy men for revenge! and the way was easy! oh, so easy. It has led me here; and now if I could but jump over and be done with it all!"
Involuntarily Thomas put forth his hand to hold her back; but he needed not to do so. The poor woman sank fainting at his feet. He tried to rouse her, but could not; and finally put her in a cab and took her to the hospital. Within a week she died there of brain fever. The doctors said her strength had been too much reduced by privation before the disease seized her for her to be able to survive it. And she was only one among tens of thousands all pressed down the same loathsome course by our "Christian civilisation." Nay, forgive the epithet, there is nothing Christian about it. It is only the civilisation of a priest-born respectableness. The droning hypocrites that we are!
At times Wanless stood by the doors of low music halls and of theatres, but the door-keepers usually ordered him off. He looked too like a detective for their taste. Then he would watch the doors of confectioners' shops,too—those shops which cloak brothels of the vilest type—staring there in the face of day, unheeded by the authorities, who must wink at some kind of outlet for the suppressed brutal passions of polished society. More than once Adelaide Codling had crossed his path at such times, and still in the company of Wiseman; but each succeeding time he saw her, Wanless thought the boldness of her manner had an increased dash of despair in it. The fate that she had come after was eating into even her light, giddy heart. The last time he spied her was one night when he stood close by the door of a café near Regent Street. The light fell full on her face as the Captain and she passed in from their cab, and her face was painted. Already, then, the bloom of youth has vanished, Thomas thought. Her hard but not unmusical laugh had given place to a grating cackle, and a leer of affected gaiety had replaced the merry eye. Poor, erring wanderer, and had a few months brought you to this? Already was the shadow of society's ruthless judgment upon you; could you even now see the blight of your life, the dreary street, the hard world's scorn, the early grave? Ah! yes, and who shall describe the devouring agony that gnawed at that girl's heart? Did she not see day by day the ebbing away of Wiseman's love? Love? God forgive me for defiling that sacred word. It was only his brutish passion that was dying. He was becoming tired of this toy his handling had smudged, and she saw it all—prepared herself for the hour when he would turn his back upon her and go to hunt down other prey. And only six months ago! Ah, parson, parson,has the iron not entered your soul? What is this that your Christian civilisation has done to your daughter? Has it made you ashamed even to look for her? Poor, hide-bound, "respectable" sinner that you are, you shall behold her again, though you sought her not—though her mother bade you close your heart and home against her for ever, because she had with that mother's help allowed herself to be betrayed.
One cold March night Thomas Wanless had strayed on to Waterloo Bridge in his coal-begrimed dress. Something, he could not have said what, had impelled him to go there that night. He had taken a hasty supper at a coffee-house near the coal yard to save time. He felt he was "superstitious," yet he went, whispering to his heart "who knows but I may see my child to-night," and trying to be cheerful.
Paying the toll at the north side, he wandered backwards and forwards till the chill from the river began to enter his bones. The one he looked for came not to him—still he could not drag himself away. He sat down in a recess and cowered below the parapet for shelter, waiting for he knew not what. It might have been ten o'clock. He had sat quite an hour, and was nearly going to sleep with weariness, inaction, and cold, when a rustle of a woman's dress near him spurred his faculties into active watchfulness. Peering into the darkness, made visible by the feeble shimmer of the lamp on the parapet, he discovered a woman approach him, crouching down in the recess on the other side of the bridge, weeping bitterly, though almost in silence.Raising himself on his elbow, he was about to speak to her when she started up with a wild despairing gesture, and, jumping on the seat, flung away her shawl.
"Yes," he heard her say to herself, with a wailing resoluteness, "I'll do it; I'll die," and with one look of farewell to the world, where no hope was left for her, a look of despair and horror that gleamed through the darkness, she clutched the parapet and drew herself on to it.
It was all the work of a moment, a flash of time, but Wanless had sprung to his feet at the sound of her voice, and was half across the bridge by the time the woman got upon the parapet. Then he saw her last look, and the gleam of a neighbouring lamp revealed her features. She was Adelaide Codling, and the recognition so startled Wanless that he staggered and for a moment stopped short. In that moment she was lost. Even as the cry burst from his lips, "Adelaide Codling, Adelaide, Adelaide," she threw herself over, as if the sight of a man approaching her had given the last spur to her despair. He reached the parapet but in time to hear the dull splash of her body in the dark tide rolling beneath. As she felt the water close round her, a cry—weird, unearthly, terrible,—broke from the girl's lips, and then all was silent, till the waves threw her up again on the other side of the bridge, when a hollow, dying wail wandered over the river—the last farewell of this poor waif of humanity, sacrificed to the pleasures of the scoundrels who "bear rule" among us, and call themselves refined.
Wanless was already at the toll-house, panting and hardly able to speak. But his look was enough, andpresently there arose a shouting to lightermen and bargemen. Boats were put off by those who had heard the splash and the cry. A crowd gathered to see. In little more than a quarter of an hour a shout rose from the water far down towards Blackfriars, for the tide was running out, and the girl had gone rapidly down stream. "Saved! saved!" was the cry, and they had, indeed, found the body of Adelaide Codling. She herself had gone. The cold had killed her rather than the length of time she had been in the water—the cold and the shock.
Thomas waited to hear the result of the doctor's efforts at the police office, and then saw the body deposited in a neighbouring deadhouse. No clue to her identification was found upon the body, the poor girl had taken care of that, more mindful of her friends in death than they of her living. But Thomas felt bound to tell the police sergeant what he knew. He gave his own address and that of the Rev. Josiah Codling, but could not tell where the girl lived, or what had been the immediate cause of her suicide. The police, seeing that the upper classes were in question, decided to keep names quiet for the present—but communicated with the girl's father, and arranged that the inquest should be delayed for two days to permit him to attend. Thomas himself was told that he would be summoned as a witness, and then went his way.
He hardly knew how he got home to his lodgings that night.
The inquest on the body of Adelaide Codling was held in the upper room of a low-class public house in UpperThames Street. Thomas Wanless obtained liberty to absent himself from work that day, at his own charges, of course, and punctually at three in the afternoon—the appointed hour—he entered the parlour of the inn. He was carefully dressed in the now threadbare and shiny suit of black, which had been his Sunday costume for many years.
A small knot of men had gathered in the room, and a desultory kind of chat was going on when Thomas entered. Two or three were grumbling at the nuisance of these "coroner's 'quests," which took men away from their business, the majority were "having something to drink," and all were utterly indifferent to the business that had brought them there.
Presently the coroner bustled into the room with his clerk. The latter hurriedly called over some names, which were answered, and then produced a greasy-looking volume in leather which he called "the book." This talisman he put into the hands of the man nearest him, to whom he mumbled some cabalistic words, at the end of which the book was passed along and kissed in a foolish sort of way by the chosen twelve. Having in this manner "constituted the jury," proceedings commenced with a procession to "view the body," led by the coroner. It lay in a rough wooden shell coffin, in a dark hole attached to an old city church, and used as a mortuary. Wanless followed the little crowd in a stunned sort of way. To his simple, rustic mind it was a dreadful thing that men should be able to go so carelessly about such a solemn duty. At the mortuary he was surprised to seethe Vicar. The old man stood by his child's head, gazing at it in a helpless, dazed way, as if hardly conscious of what it all meant. No emotion was visible on his face, no tears broke from his eyes when a policeman, softened by the sight, led him gently away to the inn parlour out of the way of coroner and jury.
The "viewing" over, the Court returned to the inn to take evidence. Of that there was very little, beyond the personal testimony of the police, until Thomas Wanless was called. When his name was mentioned, Thomas saw the old Vicar start, and for the first time look up with something like intelligence in his glance, then a scared, shrinking sort of expression stole across his features, as if he had suddenly thought of home and cruel village tongues. But he listened quietly to all the old labourer had to say. It was not much, for a proper-minded coroner would not have suffered "family secrets" to be too freely exposed, nor had Wanless himself any desire to tell more than was absolutely needful.
"I saw the deceased," he said, "climb upon the parapet of Waterloo Bridge opposite where I sat, and I ran towards her, but before I could reach her she had gone over. As she prepared to spring she gave one last look behind her, and I knew her to be our Vicar's daughter. I called her by name, but it was too late."
The sad cadence of Thomas's voice, and his obvious superiority of mien, did not prevent one of the jury from asking him in a brutal tone—
"And what wereyoudoing there, my man?"
"I was looking for my own child," answered the oldlabourer. "At first I thought I had found her, till I saw the face."
"Ah!" ejaculated the coroner. "Had you then——?" but his better impulse stopped him, and he did not finish the question. Thomas, however, understood it, and replied at once, almost under his breath—
"Yes, your Honour, I have lost a daughter, and Captain Wiseman, the same ruffian destroyed her that enticed away the Vicar's poor lass now lying yonder."
His words sent a shudder through the room, and Thomas was vexed he had spoken them ere they were well out of his mouth, for they seemed to goad the Vicar into a state of active terror which gave him energetic utterance. The more vulgar of the jury pricked up their ears at the sound of scandal, and one of them said—"Can you give us a clue then as to how this poor girl came to drown herself?"
"Oh, for God's sake don't," the Vicar interposed, starting to his feet, and stretching forth his hand beseechingly towards the labourer; "for God's sake don't expose it, Wanless." Then he collapsed again, and began to weep violently, so that Wanless felt sorry for him, and was relieved when the loud voice of the coroner was heard again ruling that "it was quite unnecessary to rake up disagreeables." He saw the "aristocracy in the business," in short, and it pleased him to be strict. Thomas, therefore, was asked a number of venture questions, whether he knew where the deceased lived, or whether he was aware of her circumstances, &c., questions to which he had mostly to answer "No." His examination was, therefore, soonended, and the coroner was beginning to tell the jury that it was a common case, requiring the usual verdict, "Suicide while in a state," merely, when, to everybody's surprise, the Vicar intimated that he had a statement to make.
He rose, trembling visibly, and looked round with a vacant eye till he caught sight of Wanless, who had fallen back, and was standing near the door. Then his look changed, and, with something like energy, he exclaimed—"I wish to ask you, gentlemen, not to believe what that man says. He has a spite against my family, and against the family at——" Here he stopped suddenly, afraid to mention the name of his child's destroyer, and the solemn voice of the peasant was heard saying—"God forgive you, Josiah Codling," softly, as if to himself. But the Vicar heard, and his trembling increased so much that when a blunt juryman interposed with—"How do you account for your daughter's suicide then?" he could only stammer a feeble—"I'm sure I cannot say."
"But surely you knew her whereabouts—what she was doing?"
"N-n-no, I cannot say I did quite. My wife—that is her mother—told me that she was visiting an aunt in Kent, and I believed it was so."
"But were there no letters, then? Didn't your daughter write to you at times?" persisted the juryman, though the coroner began to fidget and look black.
"Letters!" repeated the Vicar, as if struck with a new idea; "no, I believe not. Yes, I think she did write to her mother—to my wife that is to say. At least I sawthe envelope of one letter. I picked it out of the coal scuttle in the breakfast room, but Adelaide—that is my daughter—did not write to me—not that I recollect."
"Humph! I see, 'grey mare the better horse,'" muttered the juryman—a bluff, not unkindly-looking man, and then there fell a moment of deep silence on the Court. The Vicar stood, bearing himself up with his hands on the table before him, and seemed to have more to say. But when after a brief pause, the impatient Coroner ejaculated—"Well, sir! have you done?" the Vicar answered—"Y-yes, I think so. I only wished you not to judge my child hastily," and sat down.
A few moments more and the jury had given their verdict—"the usual one" as the coroner described it—a verdict permitting the corpse to have Christian burial, and all was over. The majority of the jury adjourned to the bar to refresh themselves, and interchange opinions on, what one of them called, "this jolly queer case." The bar-keeper himself joined in the conversation, and Wanless heard him enlarging upon the corruptions of the "Hupper classes," as he followed the Vicar down stairs. But there was no danger that comments of this kind would get into the newspapers. A paragraph about the suicide did, indeed, appear in several morning journals, but there was no mention of the seducer's name. Such a thing as an adjournment to obtain Wiseman's evidence was not even hinted. The coroner, jury, press, and all might have been bought up by the Wiseman family, so discreet was the silence—and, perhaps, some of them were. The press, at all events, was well gagged by aninfamous law of libel; and as there had been no sensational or melodramatic incidents connected with the girl's end, it was easy to bury all the story in oblivion—fortime. The "gallant" Captain might roll serenely on his way. Nothing could disturb him here except disease and the moral leprosy bred of his crimes. "After death comes the judgment."
When the little gathering had dispersed, the Vicar and Thomas Wanless found themselves alone together. Both had waited to let the unfamiliar faces disappear. Neither had thought at the moment that this shyness would bring them face to face. The peasant was the first to realise the situation, and as he looked at the broken-down old man before him, he was stirred with pity. On the impulse of the moment he went to where Codling stood, and laying his hand on his arm, said—
"Can I be of any use to you, sir?"
The Vicar started and turned hastily away, shaking Thomas's hand from his arm, at the same time answering—"No, no, Thomas Wanless, I have nothing to say to you. You have done me enough mischief for one day!"
"I have done you no mischief, sir. God forbid that I should harm you. Had it been possible I would have saved you this pain,—I would have rescued your daughter."
"Rescued my daughter, would you?" and Codling laughed a low, bitter laugh. "Rescued my daughter! Why cannot you look after your own, Thomas Wanless? I do not want your help."
"I watch for my child night and day," said the peasant solemnly. "It was in seeking her that I met yours—too late. There is ever a prayer in my heart that when I find my Sally I may not be too late for her also. Ah! poor Sally!" he sighed, and the Vicar, taking no more notice of him, he presently added—"Come out of this place, sir. It is not wise for you to stop here when there is so much yet to be done."
The Vicar took Wanless's words as insinuating that he wanted to drink, which was far enough from what Thomas intended. But the guilty are ever prone to think themselves in danger, and it was with more heat and energy of manner than he had yet shown that the Vicar turned and faced his fellow-villager.
"Go away, you loafing, good-for-nothing fellow," he almost shouted, "surely you have gratified your revenge sufficiently for one day, without standing there to mock at my sorrow, as you have already done your best to make my name a by-word." With that he moved towards the door. But Thomas stood dumbfounded between him and it, and the Vicar, too impatient now to wait for the peasant's slow motions, actually gave him a shove on one side, and hurried outside, muttering to himself as he went.
When Wanless crept out a minute or two later, still feeling heart-sore at the Vicar's treatment, he caught sight of that poor wretch through the adjoining door of the private bar, which opened to let some one out as he passed by. Codling was standing, and with trembling hand stirring a large tumbler of hot brandy and water.
Wanless stopped involuntarily, and then turning back to the bar he had just left, asked for a glass of ale. It would give him a pretext for waiting to see what became of the poor parson. In a very short time he heard Codling's voice beyond the partition ordering another double glass, and the sound shocked him so much that he put down his glass of ale half consumed, and, acting on the impulse of the moment, burst in upon the Vicar through the swing door of the compartment, crying, as he did so—
"For God's sake, don't, Mr. Codling. Leave that, and come away with me. It's a shame to see a minister of the Gospel drowning his grief in liquor. Come away at once." And he again laid hold of Codling's arm.
The drink he had already swallowed had raised the Vicar's courage, and he turned on Wanless with a look of scornful bitterness that boded a storm. But Wanless was also wrought to a high pitch, and there was a commanding sternness in his eye that served to cow the drunkard, whose wrath seemed to die within him. He looked hesitatingly around, and at sight of some bystanders grinning, a flush of shame spread over his face.
"For shame, I say," Wanless continued in a low tone, paying as little heed to the angry looks as he had done to the former taunts. "Will you stand here besotting yourself, and allow your child to be flung into a pauper's grave?"
"What business is that of yours?" the Vicar replied sullenly, but in a low voice. "Mind your own paupers, and let me and my affairs alone."
"That I will not—cannot do—Mr. Codling," Wanless answered. "Consider, sir, she was your child. You fondled her on your knee but the other day, and were proud to hear her lisp the name of father. Come away, sir, for God's sake, the body may be gone if we waste more time here;" and giving the Vicar no further chance to remonstrate, Thomas seized his arm, and dragged him out of the place away to the deadhouse.
They were indeed barely in time. Some men were about to nail up the remains of Adelaide in the rough shell where it lay, whether preparatory to burial, or in order to convey it to some hospital dissecting room, I would not venture to say. At any rate, a small bribe made them desist, and one of them even directed theVicar to find an undertaker if he wished to give his child Christian burial in other than a pauper's trench.
The sight of his daughter's body, when the lid of the case was removed, and the Vicar saw it again, moved him more than it had done at first. The men withdrew, and Thomas and he were left alone with it. Adelaide's features had settled down to the calm stillness of death, and wore a faint semblance of a smile. Sweet and pure she looked, in spite of the soiled garments and tangled hair; but the figure indicated only too clearly what had sent her to a watery grave. She had been about to become a mother.
As he looked old memories rose in the Vicar's imagination, and tears gathered in his dull, sodden eyes. He stooped tremulously and kissed the cold brow. "Poor Addy, poor Addy," he murmured, "to think that you should have come to this," and he sobbed outright—weeping like a child. Like a child too, when the passion was over, he surrendered himself to the guidance of Wanless, without further resistance, who hurried him off to the undertaker. He would like, he said, to haveherburied that evening; but that the people said they could not manage; so it was at last arranged to take her to Highgate Cemetery next morning. Thomas had then to find a place where the Vicar could pass the night, for the old man had intended to go home that evening, and ultimately he deposited him at the Tavistock Hotel.
"Will you have something to drink before you go?" said the Vicar, when he had arranged for his bedroom, evidently wanting a pretext for drinking himself, butThomas said "No," and went away to eat a frugal supper in a humble coffee-shop in Drury Lane.
They buried Adelaide next morning, Thomas again, though with difficulty, obtaining leave of absence. As soon as he saw Codling, Thomas knew that he had been drinking hard the previous night. The poor man's hands shook as with the palsy, his step was unsteady, his eye dull and bloodshot. A low fever seemed to consume him; yet he obviously felt keenly that morning the errand he and the labourer were upon, and though he hardly spoke a word all the way to the grave, he no longer looked at his companion with sullen anger. Rather he seemed to cling to Thomas as a woman clings to her natural protector. And when the earth fell on the coffin lid as the last words of the solemn burial service of the Church of England were uttered—solemn even when gabbled over by the unhappy creatures who have to repeat it every day, and all day long—he broke down again, sobbing and weeping like a child. They waited till the last sod had been placed over the lost Adelaide, and ere he went away the Vicar knelt on the damp earth, praying and weeping bitterly. Then he rose and stretched out his hand to Wanless, whose cheeks were also wet with tears, as if seeking one to lead him. Thomas grasped it, and pressed it, with "God bless and have mercy on you, sir, and on her as lies here."
"Ah! Thomas"—it was the first time the Vicar had called him kindly as of old by his Christian name—"ah! Thomas, my friend, and may God bless you for what you have done this day. But for you I would havedeserted my child in death, as I did in life. God forgive me for it."
These words seemed to open his heart, so that he talked to Wanless, all the way back to town, in an eager way, like one who had a confession to make, and could taste no peace till it was done. A sad history enough it was of domestic bitterness, of an enfeebled will, knowing what was right, and doing it not. His impulse was to seek his daughter, just as Thomas's had been, but Mrs. Codling would not hear of it. Her pride did not even allow her to admit that the girl had gone away after her betrayer. She talked of a visit to a relative at a distance, who was her own step-sister, and of Adelaide herself being ill in Kent, poor thing—not in any danger, but not strong enough to return yet—with many lies of a like kind, which the Vicar was weak enough to endorse by his silence.
Wanless also spoke of his quest and his sorrow, and the Vicar listened with sympathy; but when the peasant ventured to urge that it was his duty to denounce, and expose the ravenous wolf, who had destroyed the peace of so many families, Codling shook his head and answered—"No, no, Thomas, I cannot; I dare not. It is too late."
"Why too late, sir? Are you not a minister of Christ, and bound by the office you hold to denounce the sinner and his sin?"
The Vicar shuddered, and sat still for more than a minute without answering. Then he bent forward and took Thomas's hand—they sat on opposite sides of the cab.
"Thomas," he said sadly, "you remember that day of the row in my garden, between you and—and that fiend in human shape. You called me a poor tippling creature that day, and it was true."
"No, no, and I was very sorry," Wanless began—
"Yes, but it was," the Vicar interrupted, "I hated you for exposing me thus; but I felt and knew it was true. I am not a drunkard, Thomas, as the world measures drunkenness, but I tipple. I keep myself alive by stimulants, and bury thus my hopes and aspirations of other days. And I feel that I can do nothing. Who would listen to me or heed my words? Men would say I spoke from spite, and perhaps some even might aver that I was myself the cause of my daughter's ruin. Which also," he added, in a reflective kind of way, "which also might be true. No, no, Thomas, I must bear my burden. My—oh, my daughter, my child, my pet, when I think of you and the past, I have no hope—I can do nothing but tipple."
"Heaven forbid!" exclaimed Wanless; but the Vicar relapsed into silence. All the rest of the way to Paddington, to which he had ordered himself to be driven, he lay back in the corner of the cab, silent, with his eyes closed; but Thomas could see him ever and anon furtively wipe away the tears from his cheeks.
At Paddington, the two men, now friends again, after so many years of divergent ways and worldly fortunes, bade each other a sad farewell. Thomas went back to his coals, and the Vicar went home to his wife and his gin and water. Yet he was not quite as he had beenbefore. More than he himself thought the death of his once loved child stirred the human soul in him, and he was not able again to fall back into sottishness. Though he bore his domestic woes silently, and still drank to dull the gnawing at his heart, he became more tender towards the poor among his flock, more attentive to their wants, more accessible, and softer in manner towards all men. He even preached with sad pathos that woke responsive sympathy in the hearts of his flock, though he did not denounce the ravisher.
But the best proof of all that he had changed much for the better, is found in his conduct to Mrs. Wanless. The memory of the help and sympathy he had received from the old, despised labourer in London, lay warm in his heart, and found frequent expression in visits to the labourer's wife while she was alone, or to both husband and wife, when Wanless came back. The very day after he returned from London, he called and told Mrs. Wanless that he had seen her husband, and that he was well. He made no allusion to other matters, but he patted the head of Sally's child, and sighed as he went away. Perhaps the kindly warmth with which these simple people always greeted him, helped to soothe his later years. In giving he received more than he gave.
In the village the end of his daughter was never rightly known. Wiseman naturally never breathed a word. Rarely was his face seen in Ashbrook, and never in the church while the old Vicar lived. Mrs. Codling gave out that the poor child had been suddenly cut offby fever, and went the length of donning mourning, bemoaning the loss to her friends, braving the scorn of all true hearts, and vainly imagining she was believed, But the people guessed that Adelaide had not died so, and they suspected that Wiseman was at the bottom of her disappearance, though the story of her having committed suicide never got general credence in the village—was only a faint rumour there. So all pitied the poor Vicar, despised his uppish, false-hearted wife, and most hated the young squire. Riches and high station cannot shut men out from the moral results of their deeds, any more than they can ward off death. Nay, Mrs. Codling herself, high as she held her head, well as she acted the part of a sorrowing mother who had been heart-broken by the unexpected news of her dear daughter's sudden death, so prostrated as to be unable to go and see her laid in her grave—even Mrs. Codling felt in some sense that this was true. She grew harder in her ways, and more and more haggard in her looks, like one even at war with herself, and ever losing in the fight—till within three years God took her, and she knew her folly.
A great additional strain had been put upon the spirit of Thomas Wanless, by the death of Adelaide Codling, and he was becoming too weak in body to hold to his purpose. There were nights when he returned to his lonely lodging wishing that he might die, so great was his physical and mental exhaustion. At other times he felt an impulse strong upon him to go home—to "abandon his search for a time," as his inward tempter whispered. But his will was strong, if strength of body or hope might be weak, and he only prayed the more and clung the more to his purpose, the more he felt tempted to turn aside. "How could I face her mother again," he would answer himself, "if I had not found her."
In this conflict of mind, though not of purpose, another month rolled by, and Thomas was threatened with want of work. Fewer men were required in the coal yards as summer came on, and already several had been discharged. It was a dreary prospect enough, but what made it more so to Thomas, were the unbidden flashes of almostgladness that rose in his breast now and then, as the voice of the tempter then said—"Thomas, you will be forced to go home." He felt himself a traitor, and inexpressibly wicked at such moments, and would clench his hand and mutter—"Not yet anyhow, not yet," as he strode mechanically through the streets.
At last he found her. "When hope was calm, and grief was dead" almost, he lighted on his lost child unexpectedly, in a place where he would never have dreamed of looking for her, had it not been for the friendly advice of the police.
All over London there are coffee-houses, tobacco-shops, and confectioner-looking shops, whose real use is to be haunts of vice. Thomas had learned to know this, and his eye was always upon such as he wandered through the streets. Perchance he might see his Sally in one of them some night. He was crawling rather than walking along one of the dingy lanes behind Leicester Square one evening, about eleven o'clock, when, through the open door of a low eating-house, he heard the voice of a woman singing. His heart gave a leap within him. Surely that was Sally's voice. She had been a great singer in her girlhood, and the song he heard the notes of had once been a great favourite with her. What was it, think you? None other than that sweet sentimental ditty, "Be kind to the loved ones at home." Strange melody to be heard in such a place.
The leap of hope in Thomas's heart was followed by a thrill of anguish as he drew near to listen, more assured each moment that here, indeed, he had found his daughter.And was she thinking of home then—here, at the gate of hell. He would go and see. No one was in the outer shop, and the door of the back room stood ajar, so that Thomas walked straight through unchallenged. Pushing open the half-closed inner door, he paused in amazement at the scene disclosed to him. There might have been a score of people in that low-roofed, dingy, smoke-filled room—men and women seated at small tables, and on one or two dilapidated benches against the wall, some were busy eating, all had drink before them—ale, spirits, and even wine—stuff labelled "champagne." Through the haze of tobacco smoke, he saw several of the women with cigarettes in their mouths. All had a reckless, more or less debauched air, and the women in particular struck Thomas—a transitory flash though his glance was—as wearing a look of defiance towards all that the world deemed propriety. Men had women on their knees, or sat on the knees of women, and none seemed to heed the song. One poor outcast woman lay huddled up on the floor by the fire, too drunk to sit, but not too drunk to blaspheme. No one heeded her either.
All these things Thomas saw in the first moment of vision, but he hardly noted them then. His thoughts and his eyes were for his lost child alone. The song did not stop at his entrance, for the singer's face was not towards the door. So the voice guided his eye and—yes, it was she. There she sat in the middle of the room, nearer the fire than a youthful debauchee who sat by her with his arm round her waist. Thomas gazed a moment, and then his whole soul went out in a cry—
"Sally, Sally, oh my pet, my child, I've found you at last," and he advanced towards her, holding out his hands.
The song died instantly, but in its place rose a Babel of tongues. Thomas's cry drew all eyes upon him. Involuntarily some of the less hardened assumed airs of propriety, but the majority of the men started in anger, and a few of the women began to laugh and jeer.
"Damn your impudence, what do you want here?" shouted a copper-faced little wretch, who had been lying half asleep in a woman's lap near the door.
"Get out of this," roared another, and as Thomas made no sign the abuse grew general. The wits of the party cracked jokes over the "heavy father doing the pathetic business," and so on, but amid the din the peasant got close to the table, where his child sat. The instant his call reached her ears, Sally turned a terror-struck gaze upon him, and then buried her face in her hands. He could see she wept, for the sobs shook her, but to his further entreaty to come away she made no response, and he was trying to pull the table aside so as to reach her, when he was roughly seized by the brothel keeper, who had rushed up from the kitchen to see what the noise was about. With an oath he pulled Thomas back.
"What the devil do you want here?" he screeched. "Clear out, or d—n you, I'll give you in custody." The peasant's garb and appearance had enabled the experienced scoundrel to guess at once what was up.
Thomas turned sharp on his assailant, who was a fat, flabby-looking wretch, whose face indicated a vicious career in every line and pimple. At the moment it waslit up by an expression of elfish rage. But when in his turn the peasant seized him with a grip of iron and flung him away as if he had been a street cur barking at his heels, the man's face grew nearly pale with an expression of mingled wrath and fear. The fear kept him near the door, where he stood yelling for help, calling on "Jim" to come and turn this intruder out, volleying oaths and blasphemies, and finally beseeching the intruder not to ruin him, but taking good care all the while not to summon the police.
"Jim" came at last—the "waiter" or bully of the place. He was of stronger build than his master, and at once grabbed Thomas by the collar, purposing to turn him out. But Thomas was endowed with heroic strength in that hour, and three such men would not have driven him from the place. Wrenching himself round, he took his new assailant by the throat, and dashed him back against his master with such force that they both rolled over in the narrow doorway. This feat tickled the company immensely, and they fell to clattering with pewter pots and glasses, and to shouting in derision as encouragement.
Probably Thomas in the end might have been badly beaten by the fiends among whom he had fallen, but from that his daughter saved him. Roused, perhaps, at the sight of the unholy hands laid upon her father, and sickened by the foul jibes of men and women around her, she sprang to her feet, and, pushing round the end of the table where she sat, rushed between the combatants, and flung herself on her father's bosom, in a passion of weeping.
"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 God I've found ye, my lass; 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 lass," 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, lass, an' not findin' one?" That seemedto touch her more than all his assurances 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 sodeeply 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 God 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 God's.
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 passionate 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 constitution, 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 Hell, which London is to tens of thousands every year, she tried to get access to Captain Wiseman, and haunted the entranceof 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 passed. 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, tithe-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 institutions.
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 God, 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 passions 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 God.
During this time the Vicar—poor old man—came oftener than ever to the labourer's cottage. He could not be said to assert 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 lass that now began to toddle to his knee. And when the visitwas 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 thegrief-worn but calm old labourer to lead him quietly away. "God 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 circumstance 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—titled 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 title, 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.