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THE LIFE
OF
THOMAS WANLESS,
PEASANT.
Manchester:
JOHN DALE, 296 & 298, STRETFORD ROAD.
ABEL HEYWOOD & SON, 56 & 58, OLDHAM STREET.
London:
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO., STATIONERS' HALL COURT.
INDEX.
CHAP. PAGE.
INTRODUCTORY, 1
I. A HELOT'S NURTURE, 11
II. A PHILANTHROPIC PARSON, 24
III. THE "ALLOTMENT" CURE FOR HUNGER, 31
IV. MANUFACTURING CRIMINALS, 48
V. JAIL LIFE, 69
VI. NATURE OF A SERMON, 85
VII. MEN FOR A STANDING ARMY, 96
VIII. VERY ARISTOCRATIC COMPANY, 115
IX. AN OLD, OLD STORY, 123
X. THE PARSONAGE, 131
XI. A MERE PEASANT MAIDEN, 139
XII. HIGH AND LOW BREEDING, 150
XIII. PREACHERS OF "WORDS", 157
XIV. "CHRISTIAN" RESPECTABILITY, 166
XV. TOO BAD FOR DESCRIPTION, 179
XVI. A BETTER QUEST, 186
XVII. NOTHING THAT IS NEW, 195
XVIII. SWEET ARE THE USES OF ADVERSITY, 209
XIX. THE LOST ONE IS FOUND, 217
XX. THE LAST LONG SLEEP OF ALL, 226
XXI. THE JOURNEY'S END, 236
THE LIFE OF
THOMAS WANLESS,
PEASANT.
INTRODUCTORY.
Some years ago it was my habit to spend the long vacation in a quiet
Warwickshire village, not far from the fashionable town of Leamington. I
chose this spot for its sweet peace and its withdrawnness; for the
opportunities it gave me of wandering along the beautiful tree-shaded
country lanes; for its nearness to such historical spots as Warwick,
Kenilworth, and Stratford-on-Avon, to all of which I could either walk
or ride in a morning. But I love a quiet village for its own sake above
most things, and would rather spend my leisure amongst its simple
cottage folk, take my rest on the bench at the village alehouse door,
and walk amid the smock-frocked peasantry to the grey village church,
than mingle with the fashionable, over-dressed, prurient,
hollow-hearted, and artificial products of civilisation that constitute
themselves society--yea a thousand-fold rather. To me the restfulness
of a little village, with its cots nestling among the drowsy trees in a
warm summer day, is a foreshadowing of the rest of heaven. So I settled
myself in little Ashbrook, in a room sweet and cool, of its little inn,
and laughed at the foolish creatures who, with weary, purposeless steps
trode daily the Leamington Parade with hearts full of all envy and
jealousy at sight of such other descendants of our tattooed ancestors as
fortune might enable to gaud their bodies more lavishly than they. These
droned their idle life away flirting, reading the skim-milk, often
unwholesome, literature of the fashionable library; jabbering about
dress, and picking characters to pieces; shooting in the gardens at
archery meetings; patronising religious shows and thinking it
refinement. And I? I wander forth alone, filling my sketch-book with
whatsoever takes my fancy, or, in sociable moods, drink my ale in rustic
company, talking of hard winters and low wages, the difficulty of
living, of rural incidents, and the joys and sorrows of those toilers by
whose hard labour the few are made rich. They are not faultless, these
rustics, but they are very human, and their vices are unsophisticated
vices--the art of gilding iniquity, of luxuriously tricking out a
frivolous existence in the most subtle conceits of dress and demeanour,
has not yet reached them. When they sin they do not sublimise their sins
into the little peccadilloes and amusements incident to civilisation. So
I love them; marred and crooked and dull-witted though they may be, they
suit my humour, and fall in with my tastes for the open air, the free
expanse of landscape, the grand old trees, and the verdure-clothed
banks of the sleepy streams.
It was in this village that I met my peasant. He was not a man easy to
pick acquaintance with, for he mingled little among the gossips of the
place. Never once did I see him at the village inn or in church. He
lived apart in a little cottage near the Warwick end of the village,
with his wife and a little lass of ten or eleven summers--his
granddaughter. I often met him in the early morning going to market with
his baskets of vegetables, or in the cool of the evening, when he would
go out with his little girl skipping and dancing by his side. And the
very first time I saw him he awakened in me a strong interest. There was
something striking in his aspect--a still calm was on his face, and at
the same time a hardness lay about the mouth, and in the wrinkles around
the eyes, which was almost repellant. His figure had been above the
middle height; and although now bent and gaunt-looking, had still an
aspect of calm energy and decayed strength. But what struck me most was
the grand, almost majestic outline of his profile, and the keenness of
his yet undimmed eye, which flashed from beneath grey shaggy eyebrows
with a light that entered one's soul. The face was thoroughly English in
type, with features singularly regular, the forehead broad, the nose
aquiline, the chin large; and still in old age round and clean and full,
though the cheeks had fallen in and the mouth had become drawn and hard.
Had one met this man in "society," dressed in correct evening costume,
surrounded by courtly dames in half-dress, one would have been struck
by the individuality of that grand, grey face. Meanly clad, bent, and
leaning on a common oaken staff, the face and figure of this old peasant
were such as once looked at could not be easily forgotten. This also was
a man with a soul in him; ay, and with a heart too; for does not his eye
rest with an inexpressibly sad tenderness on the slim girl by his side
when she interrupts his reverie with the eager query, "Grand-dad,
grand-dad! Oh look at this poor dead bird in the path; who could have
killed it?"
My interest in this solitary man was keenly roused; and, from the
inquiries I made, I learned enough of his history to make me anxious to
know him. But that was not a desire easily gratified. Although always
courteous in returning my "good evening," he did so with an air that
forbade conversation, and gave me back but monosyllables to any remarks
I might make about the weather, the crops, or the child. He was not
rude, only reserved and dry, and that not with me only. To nearly all
the villagers his manner was the same. Only two may be said to have been
frequenters of his house, the old schoolmaster and the sexton. Even his
wife had few or no gossips. Yet everyone seemed to respect him, and many
spoke of him with a kind of friendly pity. Whether or not the respect
was partly due to the fact that the old man was supposed to have
means--that is, that although no longer able to do more than cultivate
his little garden and allotment patch, he was yet not on the parish--I
cannot say, but it was clear that the kindliness at least was genuine.
And so no one intruded on him. All saluted him respectfully and left
him to himself, save perhaps when one of the village milk dealers might
give him a lift on his way to market. Sometimes on a warm evening I have
seen him seated at his cottage door with a newspaper on his knee,
smoking his evening pipe, and answering the greetings of passers by. But
except his two old friends, and perhaps some village children playing
with his little one, there was no gathering of neighbours; no gossips
leant over his fence to discuss village scandals and local politics. He
was a man apart; and thus it happened that my first holiday in the
village passed away leaving me still a stranger to old Thomas Wanless.
But for an accident we might have been strangers still, and I would not
have troubled the world with this old peasant's history. I was walking
home one morning from Leamington, whither I had gone to buy some fresh
colours and a sketch-book, when I heard in a hollow behind me a vehicle
of some sort coming along the road at a great pace. Almost immediately a
dog-cart driven tandem overtook and passed me. It contained a stout,
rather blotched-looking man, who might be any age from thirty-five to
fifty, and a groom. Just beyond the road took rather a sharp turn to the
right, dipping into another hollow, and the dog-cart had hardly
disappeared round the corner when I heard a shrill scream of pain,
followed by oaths, loud and deep, uttered in a harsh, metallic, but
husky voice. I ran forward and immediately came upon Thomas Wanless's
little girl lying moaning in the road, white and unable to move,
grasping a bunch of wild flowers in one hand. Half-a-crown lay amongst
the dust near her, and the dog-cart was dashing over the crest of the
further slope, apparently on its way to the Grange. Without pausing to
think, but cursing the while the heartlessness of those who seemed to
think half-a-crown compensation enough for the injury done to this
little one, I flung my parcel over the hedge, and gathering the
half-fainting child as gently as I could in my arms, hurried with her to
her grandfather's cottage. It was a good half-mile walk, partly through
the village. The child was heavy, and I arrived hot and out of breath,
followed by several matrons who had caught sight of me as I passed by,
and who stood round the door with anxious faces. A milkman's cart met me
on the way, and I begged its occupant to drive with all speed to Warwick
for a surgeon, as the child had been run over. The man answered yes, and
went.
When I burst into Thomas's house he was dozing in his armchair, but the
noise woke him and brought his wife in from the garden. "Oh, my God,"
cried Thomas, as he caught sight of the child; and he tried to rise, but
sank again into his seat pale as death, and trembling all over. His wife
burst into tears, but immediately swept an old couch clear of some
clothes and child's playthings, and there I laid poor Sally, as the old
woman called her, half unconscious and still moaning. Rapidly Mrs.
Wanless loosened the child's clothes, and as she did so I told them what
had occurred. When I described the man who had run over the child, I was
startled by a sudden flash of angry scorn, almost of hate, that mantled
over the old man's face. He clutched the arms of his chair
convulsively, and half rose from his seat as he almost hissed out the
words--"By Heaven, the child has been killed by its own father." He
seemed to regret the words as soon as uttered, and tried to hide his
confusion by eagerly inquiring of his wife if she had found out where
Sally was hurt. The effort failed him, however, and he remained visibly
embarrassed by my presence. I would have left, but I too was anxious to
see where Sarah was hurt, so I turned to the couch to give Thomas time
to recover himself. As I did so, Sally screamed. Her grandmother had
attempted to draw down her loosened dress, and in doing so had disturbed
the child's legs, causing acute pain.
I judged at once that a leg was either bruised or broken, and begged
Mrs. Wanless to feel gently for the hurt. Almost immediately the child
uttered a scream, crying, "Oh, my right leg, my right leg;" and a brief
examination proved the fact that it was broken just a little way below
the knee. The sobbing of the child unnerved Mrs. Wanless, and she seemed
about to faint, so I led her to a seat, gave her a glass of water, and
returned to Sarah, turning her carefully flat on her back, and kneeling
down, gently removed her stocking from the broken limb, which I then
laid straight out on the couch, propping it on either side with such
soft articles as I could lay hands on. That done, I told Sarah to lie as
still as she could until the doctor came, when he would soon ease her
pain. Soothing the child thus, and hardly thinking of the old people, I
was suddenly interrupted by Thomas. He had risen from his chair, and,
leaning on his staff, had approached the couch. He stood there for a
little, looking at his little maiden with an expression of intense pain
and sorrow on his face. Then he turned to me, and, without speaking,
held out his hand. I rose to my feet, grasped it, and, suddenly
bethinking myself for the first time, uncovered my head. The tears
gathered in my eyes in spite of myself. I knew in my heart that Thomas
Wanless and I were friends.
And great friends we became in time. At first I went to the cottage
daily to enquire after little Sarah, who progressed favourably under the
Warwick surgeon's care; and when she was past all danger and pain, I
went to talk with old Thomas. Gradually his heart opened to me; and bit
by bit I gathered up the main incidents of his history. A commonplace
history enough, yet tragic too; for Thomas was no commonplace man. There
was a depth of passion beneath that still hard face; a wealth of
feeling, a range of thought that to me was utterly astounding. What had
not this village labourer known and suffered; what sorrow; what baffled
hope; yea, what despair; and, through despair, what peace! As I sat by
his chair on the summer evenings and listened to his talk with his old
friends, or walked with him in the by-lanes, gathering from his lips the
leading events of his life, my heart often burned within me. Yet,
refined reader, gentle reader, Thomas Wanless was only a peasant; a man
that sold vegetables and flowers from door to door in little Warwick
town to eke out his means of subsistence. His was the toiler's lot; the
lot without hope for this world, whose natural end is want, and a
pauper's grave.
Can I hope to interest you in this man's history? I confess I have my
doubts. There is tragedy in it; it is mostly tragedy; but then it is the
tragedy of the low born. I shall not be able to introduce you to any
arch plotter; to groups of refined adulteresses clad in robes of satin
and blazoned with jewels and gold, at once the sign and the fruit of
their shame. Nor can I promise to unweave startling plots, or to deal in
mysterious horrors such as cause the flesh of dainty ladies to creep
with a delicious excitement. No; the incidents of Thomas Wanless's story
are mostly those of a plain English villager, doomed to suffer and to
bear his share of the load of our national greatness; one above the
common level in his personal qualities to be sure, but nowise above the
common lot. Those who cannot bear to read of such, had better close the
book.
Read by you or not, Thomas Wanless's story I must write, for it is a
story that all the upper powers of these realms would do well to
ponder--from the serene defenders of the faith, with their high
satellite, lord bishops in lawn sleeves, downwards. The day is coming,
and coming soon, when the men of Thomas Wanless's stamp will invite
these dignitaries to give an account of themselves, and to justify the
manner of their being under penalty of summary notice to quit.
CHAPTER I.
WHEREIN IS SET FORTH THE BLESSEDNESS OF A HELOT'S NURTURE.
The grandfather of Thomas Wanless had been a small Warwickshire yeoman,
whom the troublous times towards the latter end of the last century,
family misfortunes, and the pressure of the large landowners, had
combined to reduce in circumstances. His son Jacob had, therefore, found
himself in the position of a day labourer on the farms around Ashbrook,
raised above his fellow labourers only by the fact that he could sign
his name, and that, through his wife, he owned a small freehold cottage
with about a quarter of an acre of garden in the village. His unusual
literary accomplishments, and his small possession did little to relieve
him from the common miseries which pressed more or less on all, but
most, of course, on the lowest class, during the years that succeeded
the "glorious" Napoleonic wars. The winter of 1819, therefore, found him
wrestling with the bitter energy of a hungry despair to get bread for a
family of six children. The task proved too much for him, and he was
reluctantly driven to let his oldest boy Thomas go to work on the
Whitbury farm for a shilling a week. Thomas had been trying to pick up
some inkling of the art of reading at a dame's school in the village,
but had not made much progress--could, when thus launched on the world,
do no more than spell out the Sermon on the Mount, or the first verses
of the 1st chapter in John's Gospel, and ere a year was well over he had
forgotten even that. There were no demagogues in those days disturbing
peaceful villages with clamours for education; no laws prohibiting the
labour of little children at tasks beyond their strength.
The squires, the parsons, and the larger farmers had the law in their
own hands, and combined to keep the lower orders in ignorance, giving
God thanks that they had the power so to do. The sporting parson of
Ashbrook of that day even thought it superfluous to teach those d----d
labourers' brats the Catechism. He appeared to think his duty done when
he had stumbled through the prayers once a week in church. That, at
least, was the range of his spiritual duties. For the rest, he
considered it of the highest moment that his tithes should be promptly
paid; that all poaching should be summarily punished, and that the
hunting appointments of the shire should always be graced by his
presence. It was also a point of duty with him always to vote true blue,
and never to miss a good dinner at any aristocratic table within his
reach. He would say grace with fervour, and drink the good wines till
his face grew purple and his eyes bloodshot. If he had another mission
in life, it was to do his best to divert in sublime disregard of merit
or human wants, the charity which some reluctantly contrite sinner of
former days had left for the poor of the parish, to the use of
creatures who had excited his good feeling by their obsequiousness.
So it came to pass that little Thomas Wanless was launched on the world
at the early age of eight, at the age when the well-to-do begin to think
of sending their children to school. Clad in a sort of blue smock and
heavy clog boots; patched, not over-warm breeches and stockings, Thomas
had to face the wintry blasts in the early morning, for it was a good
mile walk to Whitbury Farm. There, all day long, he either trudged
wearily by the sides of the horses at plough, often nearly frozen with
cold, or did rough jobs about the cattle or pigs in the muck-littered
farmyard. Weary, heavy hearted, and hungry, the lad came home at night
to his meagre supper of thin oatmeal porridge, or of black bread
flavoured with coarse bacon, washed down sometimes with a little thin
ale or cider. Often he had for dinner only dry bread and a little watery
cheese, and rarely or never any meat or milk. Supper over the boy crept
straight to bed. For two years this was the life the boy led, and at the
end of these two years his wage was but eighteenpence a week. No food
was given him save, perhaps, an occasional hunch of bread
surreptitiously conveyed to him beneath the apron of a dairymaid endowed
with fellow feeling. What need to fill up the picture of these
years--who does not know it now? The long autumn days spent watching the
corn, often, weary with watching, and hungry, falling asleep by the
hedge side. The dreary winters, the hard pallet, and still harder fare,
the scant clothing and chilled blood, the crowded sleeping rooms and
wan stunted figures; find you not all the history of lives like this set
forth in Parliamentary Blue Books for legislators to ponder over and
mend, if they can or care. Thomas Wanless suffered no more hardships
than millions that have gone before him, or that follow after to this
day, bearing on their weary, patient shoulders the burden of our
magnificent civilization. He and the others suspected not that this was
their allotted mission in our immaculate order of society; but the
concrete sufferings of his lot he could feel. For him the harsh words
and cruel blows of the farmer were real enough, and, in the misery of
his present sufferings, his young life lost its joy and hope. For him
the birds that sang in the sweet spring time brought no melody of
heaven, the autumn with its golden grain no joy. He knew only of labour,
and men's hardness, and was familiar mostly with hunger and cold and
pain. The divine order of the British Constitution had ordained it--why
should he complain? If my lord and my lady lived in wasteful luxury, if
proud squires and their henchmen trod crops under foot in their pursuit
of sport, totally regardless of a people's necessities; if vermin,
strictly preserved, ate the bread of the poor in order that the lordly
few might indulge the wild brute passion for slaughter, deemed by them a
mark of high-breeding, what was that to Thomas and his kind? Had not
those people a right to their pleasure? Was not the land theirs, by
theft or fraud it might be, but still theirs by a power none dared
gainsay? All that was as clear as day, and religion itself was
distinctly on the side of the upper classes. The Church through its
tithes shared in their exclusive privileges, and the parson of the
parish was a diligent guardian of property. On the rare occasions when
he preached a sermon his theme was the duty of the poor to be contented
and obedient. Men who dared to think, he classed as rioters, who, like
poachers and rick-burners, were an abomination to the Lord. Who so dared
to question the divine order of British society, deserved, in the
parson's view, everlasting death. Wealth, in short, according to this
beautiful gospel, was for them that had it or could steal it within the
lines of the constitution, and for the poor there was degradation,
hunger, rags, and, by way of hope, a chance of the pauper's heaven.
It must be all right, of course; but somehow, gradually, to little
Thomas it did not appear so. Very young and ignorant as he was, strange
thoughts began to stir within him. At home he saw his father sinking
more and more into the hopeless state of a man whose only earthly hope
was the parish workhouse; he saw his mother beaten to the earth with the
weary work of rearing a family of six children, without the means of
giving them enough to eat. One by one these went out, like himself, from
their little three-roomed cottage to try and earn the bread they needed.
The girls worked in the fields like the rest. All were, like himself,
uneducated, and, in spite of all, the wolf could hardly be kept from the
door when bread was dear, as it often was in those days. His father's
wages never averaged more than 8s. a-week the year round. But what did
that matter? Had not the parish provided a poorhouse, and did it not
give bread of a kind to every miserable groundling whom it could not
drive beyond its bounds? They ought surely to have been contented. Yet
Thomas, who saw and often felt their hunger, and contrasted it with the
coarse profusion at the farm, and the pampered condition of the squire's
menials at the Grange--he doubted many things.
The sight of a meeting of fox-hunters, and of the rush of their horses
across the cultivated land, filled him with wrath even then. The life he
saw around him had no unity in it. Thus it happened that, by the time he
was 13, though still stunted in body, he had begun to assert some amount
of dogged independence, and was driven away from Whitbury farm because
he flew at his drunken master for striking him with the waggoner's whip.
With some difficulty he got work after this, at 2s. a week and his
dinner, on a small dairy farm called the Brooks, which lay a mile
further from the village, on the Stratford Road. There he got better
treatment. His master was a quiet hard-working man, who had himself a
hard struggle to meet his rent, maintain his stock of nine cows, and get
a living. His own troubles had tended rather to soften than harden his
nature. Thomas, though having to work early and late, at least always
got his warm dinner, and often received a draught of milk from the
motherly housewife. Here, therefore, he began to grow; his stunted limbs
straightened out; his chest expanded, and, by the time he was seventeen
he gave the promise of becoming a more than usually stalwart labourer.
While Thomas was still new at this dairy farm, and while the remembrance
of his defiance was still fresh in the minds of farmer Pemberton, of
Whitbury, and his family, he was subjected to an outrage which almost
killed him, and left a mark on his mind which was fresh and vivid to the
day of his death. Farmer Pemberton's sons resolved to have a lark with
the "impudent young devil." Their first idea was to catch Thomas as he
came home at night, and, after trouncing him soundly, duck him in the
stinking pond formed by the farm sewage. On consulting their friend, the
eldest son of Lawyer Turner, of Warwick, he, however, said that it would
be better to frighten the little beggar into doing something they might
get him clapped into jail for. Led by this young knave, the farmer's
three sons disguised themselves by blackening their faces and donning
old clothes. Then, armed with bludgeons and knives, they lay in wait for
Thomas as he came home from work in the gloom of an October evening.
Their intention was to seize him, and amid great demonstrations of
knives and fearful imprecations, order him to take them to Farmer
Pemberton's rickyard. Once there they intended to force him to set fire
to some straw in the yard, and then seize him for fire-raising. As young
Turner said, they might easily in this way swear him into jail for a
twelvemonth.
This diabolical plot was actually and literally carried out upon this
poor, ignorant, peasant lad by four young men, supposed to be educated
and civilised; and it might have had all the disastrous consequences
they could have wished but for an accident. A labourer on the farm
overheard part of the conversation of the plotters as they marshalled
themselves on the night of the expedition, and, as soon as the coast was
clear, stole off to warn the boy's father. Jacob Wanless and he at once
roused the neighbours; and, after a delay of perhaps twenty minutes,
half a dozen men started for Whitbury Farm, while as many took the
Stratford Road to try to save the boy from capture.
The latter party was too late; Thomas was caught near a cross-road about
a quarter of a mile from the farm. Two disguised men rushed upon him
from opposite sides of the road with savage growls, their blackened
faces half hid in mufflers. Brandishing clubs and knives, they demanded
his name. Thomas gave one piercing yell of terror and dashed forward,
but was seized and held fast. Gripping him by the collar of his smock
till he was nearly choked, young Turner again demanded his name, and, on
Thomas gasping it out, roared in his ear, "then you are the villain we
want. You must take us to farmer Pemberton's rickyard and stables. We
are rick-burners, and will kill you unless you obey." Whereat he
flourished a knife, and drew the back of it across his own throat, with
a significant gurgle. Thomas trembled in every limb, tried to speak, but
his tongue failing him, burst into a wail of crying instead, and sank to
the ground. The scoundrels laughed hoarsely, and, amid a volley of
oaths, hauled him to his feet. Then forcing him on his knees, Turner
ordered him to swear to lead them to the place, and keep faith with
them. As the boy hesitated, they stood over him crying, "Swear, swear,
you obstinate pig, or you die," and Turner held the knife to his heart.
Thoroughly cowed and terror stricken, Thomas gasped out, "I swear." A
man on each side then laid hold of him, hauled him to his feet and led
him towards the farm, the other two ruffians acting guards, muttering
foul oaths, and brandishing their cudgels within an inch of his face in
a way that froze his very heart's blood with terror.
Arrived at the barn, they produced a tinderbox, and, lighting a match,
ordered Thomas to set fire to a heap of loose straw that lay near the
barn door. Thomas refused. A dim glimmer of the fact that he was being
hoaxed had risen through his fears. He thought he knew the voices of at
least two of his tormentors, and he grew bolder. Twice the order was
repeated amid ominous handling of knives, but he sullenly bade them
light the straw themselves, and thrust his hands into his pockets. After
a third refusal one of the Pembertons struck him in the face a blow that
loosened three of his teeth, and made his nose bleed profusely. Then
once more he was asked to light the straw, but the only reply was a
piercing cry for help. In a moment a gag was thrust into his bleeding
mouth, and he was flung on the ground, where they proceeded to pinion
his hands and his feet. Before completing the tying, Turner hissed into
his ear, "Hold up your hand to say you yield, you little devil, or we
will beat you to death." But Thomas lay still, so the whole four of them
commenced to push him about with their feet, and to strike him with
their sticks, amid growls and horrid oaths. Then Thomas lost
consciousness. When he awoke again he was at home in his mother's bed.
His mother was kneeling by his side weeping bitterly, and his father
stood over him holding a feeble rushlight, watching for the return of
life. The boy was in great pain, especially about the legs and abdomen,
and could not move his left arm at all. His face was swollen, his lips
and gums lacerated and sore, and he lay tossing in pain till the grey
morning light, when he dropt off into a fitful sleep. A fortnight
elapsed before he was able to resume work.
The rescuing party had reached the farm barely in time to prevent the
brutal ruffians from carrying their sport to perhaps a fatal conclusion.
Guided by the curses and laughter, Jacob and his friends had rushed upon
the savages in the midst of the kicking, and Jacob himself in a frenzy
of rage wrenched a cudgel from the nearest of them, felled him to the
earth with it, and dragged his son from amongst the others' feet. The
man he struck happened to be Turner; and, seeing him down, the cowardly
young Pembertons took to their heels before the slower moving labourers
could capture them. Turner, all bleeding as he was, they attempted to
take with them in order to give him into custody, but on the way to the
village he tripped up one of his guards, wrenched himself free, and
bolted. An outrage like this surely could not go unpunished. Jacob
Wanless determined that it should not, and went to a Warwick lawyer, a
rival of old Turner's, with a view to get redress. This lawyer, Overend
by name, was a sort of pettifogger, who laid himself out for poor men's
work. In his way he was clever enough; but, unfortunately, he often got
drunk; and, even when sober, was hardly a match for old Turner. When
Thomas's case came before the justices, Jacob, therefore, fared badly.
Overend had just enough drink to make him violent and abusive, and the
result was that his witnesses were so bamboozled and browbeaten by both
Turner and the bench that they became confused, and gave incoherent
answers; so it was not very difficult, false swearing being easy, for
Turner and his clients to make Thomas the criminal. His attack on old
Pemberton's person was raked up in proof of his bad disposition, and his
presence in the farmyard was attributed to motives of revenge. As a
result, instead of obtaining redress, Jacob's case was dismissed by the
magistrates, and he and his son admonished. The chairman of the day,
Squire Polewhele, of Middlebury, told Jacob he might be thankful that
they did not put his son in jail for assault. There could be no doubt in
his opinion that the young scamp had gone to farmer Pemberton's rickyard
with malicious intent, for it was clear that he was an ill-conditioned
rascal, and if his father did not take better care of his upbringing he
might live to see him come to a bad end.
Such was Jacob's consolation. It took him and his son six months to pay
Overend's bill of 30s. The unlucky labourer who had brought the news of
the plot fared perhaps worse than anybody, for old Pemberton, at the
instigation of his sons, turned him off at a moment's notice. It was
nearly four months before the poor fellow could get another steady job,
and he and his family were all winter chargeable on the rates.
As for the boy Thomas, his nervous system had received such a shock
that it became a positive agony to him to have to trudge home from his
work in the dark winter nights, and when his father was unable to go to
meet him he always ran at the top of his speed past Whitbury farm, his
heart within him palpitating like to burst. All his life long, so deep
was the impression that fright made on him, a certain nervous tremor
seized him whenever he found himself alone on a strange road on a
moonless night.
The rest of the boyhood of Thomas Wanless was uneventful. He grew in
mind and in stature, and suffered less withal from hunger than many of
his order. At the age of twenty he took a wife, following in that
respect the habits of those around him. 'Tis the fashion nowadays to
inveigh against early marriages, and especially against the poor who
marry early. By such a practice it is declared miseries are heaped upon
them, and our pauper roll is augmented. This is an easy way to push
aside one of the most perplexing social problems that this country has
ever had to face. With the growth of wealth marriage has become a luxury
even to the rich, and for the comparatively poor a forbidden indulgence.
As a consequence of this the youth of the present day avoid marriage
with all its hampering ties. A code of morals has thus grown up which
may be said to be paving the way for a coming negation of all morality.
A young man may commit almost any crime against a young woman with
impunity so long as he steers clear of all hints of marriage. The
relations of the sexes are under this modern code utterly unnatural and
fruitful of corruption. Nor can it be otherwise while a man is
forbidden under penalty of social ostracism to take a wife. To marry is
almost as sure a way to renounce the world, with all its hopes and
advantages, as of old was the taking of a monastic vow. What the next
generation will be, what licenses it will give itself under the modern
restrictions which outrage all that is best in humanity, I must not
venture to predict. But that corruption is spreading on all hands, that
flippancy, folly, and worse, dominate the relationships of the young of
both sexes is even now too apparent.
But I am travelling far from Thomas Wanless's history. He at all events
felt no social restraint save that of poverty, which he did not fear,
and so he married young. The lad had, indeed, little choice.
His mother died when he was 19, and one of his sisters, the youngest of
the family, was also dead. The other had married and gone to a village
five miles beyond Warwick. Of his three brothers, one only remained at
home, a boy of 14. William, the next in age to himself, had been
kidnapped at Gloucester, and carried off to sea in a Government ship;
and the other boy, Jacob, had a place as stable-boy at Melton Priory,
Lord Raven's place, near which his married sister lived. There was no
woman, therefore, at home to cook food for the three that were left. His
father was too broken down to dream of marrying again, there were no
houses in the miserable overcrowded village where the three could be
taken in to lodge together, and so, unless they separated, what could
Thomas do but marry? He was willing enough, of course, being, like all
country lads of his years, honestly in love; and so at twenty he brought
home his wife to take his mother's place in the old freehold cottage,
soon to be his own. Sarah Leigh was a year or two older than her
husband, and had been an under-housemaid at the Grange, the family seat
of Squire Wiseman, who was the greatest man of the parish, and lord of
the manor. Her experiences there were not, perhaps, such as best fitted
her to be a labourer's wife, and at first she was inclined to
commiserate herself. But at bottom Sarah was a woman of sense, and by
the time her second child arrived had grown into a staid, affectionate
housewife, ever cheerfully busy in making her home comfortable.
Prudent or not, Thomas thus found himself in a humble and modest way
happy. He was now acting as under-waggoner at a farm called Grimscote,
near Warwick, and had as much as 9s. 6d. a week in summer, besides beer
and extra money in harvest. In winter his work was also regular, though
his wages were then only 8s. a week. His duties often took him
considerable distances away from home. He was frequently at Coventry and
Stratford-on-Avon, and he had once been as far as Worcester, and as his
observant faculties were keen, he took mental notes of what he saw. Full
of pity for the misery that he everywhere met, the feelings of his
boyhood became keener, and his independence of spirit more out-spoken.
Already this had attracted in a passing way the attention of the
authorities, and some even went so far as to shake their wiseacre heads
over him, and dubiously hint that he might be dangerous.