BRINGS US ALL TO THE JOURNEY'S END.
The closing years of Thomas Wanless's life were years of peace. His
strength never came back to him after his daughter's death. Indeed, all
the summer that followed it he was beaten down by his old complaint
rheumatism, but there was no dread of the workhouse and the pauper's
grave upon him now. His boy, Thomas the younger, was prospering in the
New World, where landlordism had not yet grown a curse, and insisted on
sharing his modest wealth with his parents. Had the old man been well he
would probably have sturdily refused this help, but as things were he
bowed his head and took what God had given, thankful to his son,
thankful to Heaven, and rejoicing above all things that his boy--his
three children that remained--were delivered from the life that he
himself had led. But what would his end have been save for this
assistance? Assuredly a pauper's. Nothing could have saved him from that
fate. The doom of the labourer is written. It is part of the recognised
glory of the English constitution that he shall die in misery as he
lives; that if he becomes disabled, his shall be the pauper's dole.
The prosperity of young Thomas rendered Thomas and his wife less
reluctant to let their other children go to Australia. They clung to
them, of course, and would have fain kept them, as it were, within
sight.
Old Mrs. Wanless was heart-broken at the thought of losing Jane, but she
bore her sorrow and made no complaint, when her husband, his own heart
torn with grief, said--"Let the lass go. There is hope for her and her
husband yonder. Here there is none." Jane therefore married her young
gardener in the autumn of the year of Sarah's death, and went away to
join young Thomas in Victoria. And the soldier-boy, Jacob, went with
them. His time of soldiering was not ended, but his brother Thomas
bought him off, and assisted them all to go to the new country. Jacob
was the labourer's prodigal son, and was loved accordingly. While he
soldiered his parents hardly ever saw him, but he spent a couple of
weeks at home before setting sail for Australia; and then the strength
of his nature, its likeness to that of his father, and the trials he had
endured, brought the old man and him very near to each other. Thus the
wrench of parting was keenest for old Thomas in his case, because the
joy had been but a flash of light in a dark existence.
"I will never see your face again," the old man said to his children the
last Sunday evening they passed together. "To your mother and me this
parting will be bitterer than death, because you will live, and we will
never hear your voices nor see you more in this world."
"Oh, father, do not say that," sobbed Jane; "you and mother will come
out to Australia to us, and we'll all live together and be so happy."
"No, my dear, that will never be. Mother and me are too old to move now.
We will stay behind and pray for you. The time will not be long, and we
have hope. Be brave, my children, and be God-fearing, and, I doubt not,
we shall meet in a better world than this."
In this spirit they parted, and henceforth old Thomas Wanless and his
wife were left alone with only the little child that Sarah had
bequeathed to them--alone, but not miserable. As the keen edge of sorrow
blunted, the old people went about the daily avocations as before,
serene in appearance, if often sad in spirit. Thomas never worked again
as he had been doing before he went to London, but he became strong
enough to tend his garden and his allotment carefully, and to do
frequent light jobs for the Scotch tenant of Whitbury farm, whose friend
he became. He was thus living almost up to the time when I first made
his acquaintance.
Then, as his strength of body failed, his mind, as it seemed to me, grew
keener, broader, and more penetrating. He read much, and watched with
close interest the ebb and flow of home politics, looking ever for the
dawn of a better day for the tillers of the soil. When the Warwickshire
labourers broke out in assertion of their right to live, he hailed the
event as an omen of better times. Too wise a man to be carried away by
the notion that single-handed the unlettered, miserable poor could turn
the world upside down, he nevertheless viewed these stirrings among the
dry bones as the beginning of great changes. "I shall not live to see
the land in the hands of those who till it," he would say, "but I can
die in hope now. England will after all be free, and the people will
have their own again. Thank God."
This belief cheered his last years, and added to the joy of his death.
He died in peace with all men, long indeed, ere his hopes for his
fellow-men had seen fruition, but to the last he declared that it was
coming, that blessed revolution when State Churches should be no more,
and squires, and fox-hunters, and game preservers, and all the social
abominations that ground the poor to the dust would be shaken off and
left far behind in the progress of the nation.
Three years have come and gone since I stood by the side of Thomas
Wanless's eldest son at his death-bed, and by his grave. He almost died
of the joy he felt at seeing that son once more, when he had given him
to God as one gives the dead. A paralytic stroke seized him within a few
hours of young Thomas's arrival, and he never fully recovered his
faculties. Within a fortnight a second stroke carried him off, and all
the village mourned. His son and I, surrounded by many mourners, laid
him to rest in the old churchyard beside his children, among his
forgotten forefathers. There now, to be equally forgotten, lay squire,
and parson, and parson's wife, all peacefully sleeping, life's fever
over, its jealousies and petty dignities laid aside for evermore.
And Mrs. Wanless waits still, attended by her grandchild, young Sarah,
now a bright, intelligent, well-educated young woman. When her
grandmother joins Thomas in the last rest of all, she will be taken
across the ocean to these warm-hearted friends far away, and then the
old land will never more see aught of this sturdy peasant stock. But
our statesmen think it a blessing they should go.
THE END.
Transcriber's Notes
Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
Hyphen added: "ditch[-]cutting" (p. 49), "broken[-]hearted" (p. 72),
"well[-]nigh" (p. 171).
Hyphen removed: "house[-]wife" (p. 15), "ear[-]shot" (p. 58),
"dumb[-]founded" (p. 62), "common[-]place" (p. 120), "now[-]a[-]days"
(p. 194), "man[-]kind" (p. 197), "dead[-]house" (p. 210), "out[-]cast"
(p. 219).
p. 2: "tatooed" changed to "tattooed" (our tattooed ancestors)>
p. 27: "enthusiam" changed to "enthusiasm" (the feverish enthusiasm of
inexperience).
p. 27: "portentiously" changed to "portentously" (shook their heads
portentously).
p. 34: "meeeting" changed to "meeting" (the meeting was to be held).
p. 35: "wizzened" changed to "wizened" (Grey wizened faces).
p. 41: "diarymaid" changed to "dairymaid" (the dairymaid will marry).
p. 59: "famalies" changed to "families" (the pleasure their families
would have).
p. 85: "of of" changed to "of" (sobriquet of Methody Tom).
p. 91: "upheavel" changed to "upheaval" (that curious upheaval).
p. 96: "possibilites" changed to "possibilities" (did not consider these
possibilities).
p. 100: "Calvanistic" changed to "Calvinistic".
p. 136: "opportunites" changed to "opportunities" (contrived that his
opportunities).
p. 139: "exited" changed to "excited" (her beauty excited envy).
p. 144: "Mrs. Wanlass" changed to "Mrs. Wanless".
p. 179: "thought" changed to "though" (weary though the old woman was).
p. 181: "charing" changed to "charring" (to go out charring).
p. 188: "ricketty" changed to "rickety" (rickety, filthy, old tenement).
p. 193: "Dury Lane" changed to "Drury Lane".
p. 203: "Waterleo Bridge" changed to "Waterloo Bridge".
p. 203: "mein" changed to "mien" (his obvious superiority of mien).
p. 220: "deil" changed to "devil" and "screached" changed to "screeched"
("What the devil do you want here?" he screeched).
p. 224: "desparing" changed to "despairing" (her despairing looks).
p. 237: "Jone" changed to "Jane".