Gently along the vale of tears
Lead me from Tabor's sunbright steep;
Let me not grudge a few short years
With thee toward Heaven to walk and weep.
But, oh! most happy, should thy call,
Thy welcome call, at last be given--
"Come, where thou long hast stor'd thy all!
Come, see thy place prepar'd in Heaven!"
CHRISTIAN YEAR.
The recollection of little Annie has made me wander from my story,
and I must now hasten to bring it to a conclusion. I left the
Asylum, pondering deeply on the things I had heard and seen. My
heart was sad within me; for I could not help giving way to a feeling
of compassionate sorrow as I thought of the old man's solitary lot.
His past history seemed, indeed, to be lost in almost hopeless
oblivion. But I knew that he must have been crushed and broken down
by some terrible calamity in early youth; that he had been awakened
from the stupor which it produced to the stern reality of bonds and
chains, and then been doomed to a dull, unvaried captivity, not for
days, weeks, or months, but for a long period of more than fifty
years. Thus reason kept drawing a melancholy picture of one without
home, without friends, dependent on charity for his daily bread,
whose whole existence was a dreary void, with no employment to
beguile his thoughts, no hope to cheer him on his way. It needed
only the recollection of that peculiar solitude of mind, which is
almost the certain offspring of insanity, to complete its gloom.
And yet, after all, it was my own infirmity which made me sad; for,
when I had strength to gaze on the same picture with the eye of
faith, bright and beautiful were the images that I saw. I then
perceived that he was not without home, for his home was in the land
of spirits beyond the grave; he was not without friends, for his wife
and children were waiting for him there; while he remained upon
earth, he was not dependent, for he felt his daily wants to be
supplied by a Father's care; he never, for a single instant, was
without occupation, for he had a long warfare to accomplish, a
distant journey to perform; and still less was he uncheered by the
blessing of hope, for he was able to rest in humble trust on his
Saviour's promise, and go on, day after day, laying up treasures for
himself, which neither moth nor rust could corrupt, nor thieves break
through and steal. Out of the loneliness caused by his affliction he
had created a new world for himself, or rather, he had been drawn by
it to live in that world which, though unseen, God has really created
for us all. And surely to him life could never have been dull and
unvaried, while he was able to trace the types and emblems of
spiritual things alike in the passing gleams of sunshine, and in the
dark shadows that rested upon his path!
Mingled with these conflicting emotions, the question from time to
time arose in my mind, 'And was poor Robin really mad?' And again it
was only my own infirmity which caused me to shrink from the reply.
It is hard indeed to define madness; and the state of his intellect
probably varied from time to time. Thus it may have been almost
without a cloud when little Annie was his companion. So, also,
during my own brief interview with him, the stillness of the evening,
and the unison of his own thoughts with the surrounding scene, may
have breathed a soothing influence upon his mind. And yet when I
reflected calmly on that very interview, I felt that they were right
in not suffering the old man to travel alone along the journey of
life.
His was the second childhood; simple, pure, and holy as the first,
and yet, in his case, no less than the first, requiring a protector's
care. He spoke and thought as a child, and children could understand
him; but the calm mirror of his mind quickly grew troubled in his
intercourse with men, and he then lost the power of explaining his
thoughts, or perhaps of himself distinguishing between the shadow and
the substance, the things of sight and the things of faith. Reason
had resigned her sway during the mental conflict which had been
caused by his calamities; and though peace and quietness had been
restored, she never had attained sufficient vigour to resume it
again. Nay more; it may be that her lamp was the more dim and
uncertain, on account of the brighter and clearer light which from
that time burned unceasingly in his soul. It is possible that he was
slow in observing the different shades of colour that passed across
earthly objects, because to his eye one unfading colour was resting
upon them all; and that his mere intellectual faculties remained weak
and palsied, because out of this very weakness he had been made
strong, and he was at all times conscious of the presence of a surer
support and a safer guide.
And what matters it, if it were so? Why may we not revere poor
Robin, and love him, and learn from him, and yet not shrink from
acknowledging that his reason had gone astray? Surely there is no
one who would not gladly leave the hard, dull road of life, if only
they could wander with him along the same bright and happy paths!
There is no one who would not give the choicest gifts of reason twice
told, if only they could purchase for them the child-like faith of
that simple-hearted man!
I was half sorry when my arrival at the village of B---- made me
change these silent meditations for the attempt to investigate the
old man's connexions and history. It was not, however, mere
curiosity that prompted me to do so. I was anxious, if it were
possible, to save him from a pauper's grave. For a long time my
inquiries were in vain. Some few, indeed, had heard of poor Robin,
for his fame, as I have said, had spread beyond the walls of the
Asylum; but the name of Wakeling was unknown to them; and they did
not believe he had ever been connected with the parish of B----.
They referred me, however, to the cottage of the oldest inhabitant of
the village. She was a widow, of very great age, having lived to see
four generations around her. A few years since, they said, she was
able to speak distinctly of events that had happened more than half a
century ago, but latterly her memory had become impaired.
When I mentioned to her the name of Wakeling, the word at once
awakened some recollection of the past. She twice repeated it, and
added, almost mechanically, "Good and excellent people, sir, and very
kind to the poor." But when I questioned her as to their occupation
and history, and asked what had become of them, she shook her head,
as though the thread of memory had been broken off, and she was
unable to unite it again.
As a last hope, I referred directly to the spring of 1783, and
inquired whether it had been marked by any particular occurrence.
"Ah, sir," she replied, "much of the past is now like a dream to me,
but that is a period which I never can forget." The tone of sadness
in which these words were uttered, proved some deep sorrow to be
connected with the remembrance of it; and on further questioning, I
learnt that it was a season in which an infectious fever had raged in
the village, and that whole families had been carried off by its
ravages: she herself had then been left an orphan. But though her
recollection of the illness itself seemed as vivid as though it had
occurred but yesterday, of the Wakelings she could say nothing with
distinctness. It may be that her mind was too absorbed with the
remembrance of her own grief to allow her to recur to that of others;
or it may be that, even at the time, in the general affliction the
loss of an individual, however grievous, had been scarcely noticed,
and soon forgotten. At length she seemed to grow weary of my
importunity, and said, "I cannot tell who may have lived, and who may
have died: you must go, sir, to the churchyard, and there you will
find the only certain history of that fatal spring."
A new thought was suggested by these words, and I repaired thither in
the hope that I might find that information which I had sought in
vain from the living, among the silent records of the dead.
The evening was now drawing on, and it was in truth the very hour at
which but yesterday I had parted from the old man. I was alone; and
as I trod, with a cautious reverence upon the green sod, there was no
sound to break the tranquillity of the scene, save the ripple of the
waters at the edge of the cliff on which the churchyard stood. Their
restless motion only made me feel the more deeply the stillness of
the hallowed ground itself; and I thought, that if the old man had
been with me, he might have found in it an apt emblem of the quiet
resting-place of the dead, lying on the very borders of the sea of
life, and yet untroubled by its murmuring and sheltered from its
storms. I was not long in discovering the object which I sought.
The rays of the setting sun at once directed me to a stone at the
eastern extremity of the churchyard. It was distinguished from those
around by a simple cross; but in spite of the soft light that was now
shed upon it, it was with difficulty that I deciphered the
inscription which it bore. For not only was the tomb itself thickly
covered with moss and weeds, but my own eye grew dim with tears, as
one by one the few sad words revealed to me the secret of the old
man's history. His restlessness during the spring, the object of his
last solitary journey, and parts of his conversation with myself,
which before had seemed obscure, were now fully explained. The
inscription was as follows:--
SACRED
TO THE MEMORY OF
SUSAN, WIFE OF ROBERT WAKELING,
WHO DIED
APRIL 18TH, 1783, AGED 28 YEARS.
ALSO OF THEIR CHILDREN,
ALICE, AGED 6 YEARS, HENRY, AGED 5 YEARS,
AND EDWARD, AN INFANT,
WHO SURVIVED HER ONLY A FEW DAYS.
"I SHALL GO TO THEM
BUT THEY SHALL NOT RETURN TO ME."
2 SAM. XII. 21
There was room beneath the text from Holy Scripture for one name
more, and it was there that I added the words:
ALSO OF ROBERT WAKELING,
WHO DIED
APRIL 18TH, 1843, AGED 93 YEARS.
They remain as a simple record that the old man was indeed united at
last, in body as well as spirit, to those whom he had so dearly
loved, and mourned so long.
[Transcriber's note: Odd and unusual spellings are as printed.]