The Life Of Thomas Wanless, Peasant Part 5

CHAPTER VII.

MAY INDICATE TO THE READER, AMONGST OTHER THINGS, SOME OF THE ADMIRABLE ARRANGEMENTS WHEREBY ENGLAND OBTAINS MEN FOR A STANDING ARMY.

Had Thomas Wanless known what was in store for him in the future he might have elected to leave Ashbrook for ever, and continue the life of a railway navvy. As such his pay was good, and by thrift he might save enough money either to venture on small contracts for himself, or start some kind of business in one of the growing midland towns. But Thomas did not consider these possibilities. The life he led grew more and more repulsive to him as time went on; and he yearned unceasingly for the quietude of his native village, and for his own fireside peace. Besides, he hungered to get back to work on the land. If he could not get fields of his own to till, at least he might hope to again help to till the fields of others, and to watch the corn bloom and ripen as of yore.

So when the local bit of railway was made, Thomas came home to Ashbrook, and once more went abroad among his neighbours; once more he accepted the labourer's lot, with its hard fare and starvation pay. He returned late in autumn when work was scarce; but his wife and he had saved money in the past two years, and he managed to live with the help of what odd jobs he could get, and without much trenching on his store till spring came round. Fortunately his son Thomas had been able to cultivate the allotment patch in his father's absence, and in spite of the fact that the new owner of the soil had doubled their rent, it had paid for its cultivation very well. The growing importance of Leamington provided all surrounding villages with an improving vegetable and fruit market, of which Thomas's wife and family had taken full advantage in his absence.

So well indeed had they done, that he himself indulged for a short time in dreams of becoming a market gardener; but he soon found that there was no chance for him in that direction. He might get work from the farmers around, but no landlord would rent him the few necessary acres.

A broken man when he left Ashbrook to become a navvy; his absence had not improved his position. On the contrary, the parish magnates rather looked upon him as a greater black sheep than ever. The old ideas about the rights of landowners to the labour of the hind, as well as to the lion's share of the products of that labour, had by no means died out, and it was still a moral crime in the eyes of the landlord for a labourer to have enough daring and independence of spirit, to enable him to seek work in another part of the country. In some respects Wanless was therefore a greater pariah when he came home than when he went away, and the summit of offence was reached when the report got abroad that he had actually made some money, and wanted to rent a little farm.

Squire Wiseman had condescended to mention this report to Parson Codling, and they both agreed that this kind of thing must be discountenanced, else the country would not be fit for respectable persons to live in. "The idea," Wiseman had exclaimed, "of this d----d poacher-thief wanting to become a farmer! why bless my life, we shall have our butlers wanting to be members of parliament next." And this seemed to be the general opinion, so that the only practical outcome of Thomas's ambition was a greater difficulty in procuring work, and a further advance in the rent of his allotment. The successor of old Captain Hawthorn took this mode of expressing his concurrence in the general opinion, rather than that of a summary ejectment, he being a practical man, and wise in his generation. It was better policy to take the profits of Thomas's labours than to turn him adrift, and have to pay rates for the maintenance of him and his family.

Against the odds and prejudices thus at work, Wanless fought manfully for more than two years. When he could get work he laboured at it early and late, and when, as often happened, work was denied him, he tended his little garden and his allotment patch with the closeness of a Chinese farmer. His flowers were the pride of the village, and his care coaxed the old trees in his garden into a degree of fruit-bearing that almost put to shame the vigour of their youth. Yet he could not always make ends meet; and when he began to see his little h.o.a.rd melting away, his heart once more failed him. If the farmers would not have him he must once more try elsewhere, and again a local railway afforded him a refuge. He became a "ganger" on the Stratford line at 14s. a-week, and for more than four years made his daily journey backwards and forwards on his "beat," winter and summer, in cold and heat, well or ill. In one sense, this work was not so hard as a farm labourer's or a navvy's is, but it told on the health as much. Exposure, thin clothing, and poor food did their work rapidly enough, and Thomas's limbs began to stiffen, and his back to grow bent before his time. Like his fellows, he promised to become an old man at 50, but he would have stuck to his work had not a sharp attack of pleurisy laid him up in the winter of 1855, and once more compelled him to seek to live by farm labour. He could not face the bleak unsheltered railway track again, and even if he could, there was no room for him. His place had been filled up. With a weary heart and a spirit well-nigh crushed, Thomas once more looked for work on the farms around Ashbrook. "Is there no hope for us, Sally, la.s.s?" he would often cry. "Must we go to the workhouse at last?" "Ay, the workhouse, the workhouse!" he would exclaim. "The parsons promise us a deal in the other world, but that's the best they think we deserve here. Well, perhaps they mean to give us a better relish for the other world when it comes."

Thomas had one thing to cheer him, though, and no doubt that gave him more courage to face the world again than he otherwise would have had.

His precious son, young Tom, had emigrated to Australia about a year before this terrible illness had enfeebled his father. He had gone as an a.s.sisted emigrant, but the old man had given him 10 of old Hawthorn's 20 to begin the New World upon. The parting had cost the family much, and the father most of all; but they felt it to be for the best. There was no room to grow in the old land; in the new there was a great freedom. The lad dreamt of gold nuggets; but the wiser father bade him stick to the land as soon as he could get a bit to stick to.

This departure was a loss to the family purse, for the youth had obtained pretty steady work, and generously gave all into the keeping of his mother. But Jane and Jacob were now also out into the world, winning such bread as they could get, and the family burden was therefore lighter. Jane was general servant to a dissenting draper in Leamington, and Jacob enjoyed the proud distinction of being waggoner's boy at Whitbury farm, now tenanted by a go-ahead Scotch ex-bailiff, who had succeeded the Pembertons when they went to the dogs with drink and horse-dealing. This hard-fisted, ferret-eyed agriculturist worked his men and boys as they had never been worked before, but he did not make the hours of labour so long, and he paid them a trifle better than his neighbours, whose jealousy and dislike he thereby increased. Probably he rather liked to be contemned by his fellows. It increased the self-sufficiency of his righteousness, and made him the more proud of being a strict Calvinistic Presbyterian, endowed with a conscience as inelastic as his creed. Be that as it may, this man gave Jacob Wanless 10s. a week and made the lad work for it. Jacob was not then 17, and at his previous place had only obtained half that sum with a grudge. But then his work had been a long day's drawl too often, while now his duty as under waggoner was practically a good 10 to 12 hours' toil as stable a.s.sistant, feeder of stalled cattle, and general labourer about the farm.

From these causes Wanless had some ground for hope, although work was difficult for him to get, and his power to do it when got less than it had been. And when he looked round him his causes for thankfulness multiplied. Was not his neighbour Hewens, the under gardener at the Grange, worse off than he, with a younger family of seven, one of whom was an object, and a weekly income averaging about 9s. a week all the year round. Thomas's old and tried friend Satchwell, the blacksmith, too, with his three children living and a wife dying in decline, had surely a harder lot than he, for all the coldness of farmers and contumely of parish deities.

As spring warmed into summer, indeed, Wanless's strength and heart came back to him in a measure. His hopes were chastened, but they were there still, and a.s.serted their life. Good news came from his far-away son, too. Young Tom had taken his father's advice, and, avoiding the charms of gold digging, had gone to work at high pay on a sheep run. Already he spoke of buying a farm of his own, and getting father and mother and all the rest to join him in the colony. Surely any man's heart would warm at prospects like these, and Thomas so far entertained the project as to talk it over with his friends, Brown, Satchwell, and Robins, who agreed in thinking it "mighty fine," and in wis.h.i.+ng that they could mount and go along. "A vain wish, friends," Brown would say, "vain so far as I am concerned, for I cannot herd sheep or hold a plough, and they want neither parish clerks nor schoolmasters in the bush." Robins felt that he was too old and too poor to think of the change, and Satchwell sighed often as he thought on what a sea voyage might yet do for his wife. But as for Thomas, of course he could go when his son sent him the money, they said; and he, remembering that he had still a few pounds of his h.o.a.rd unspent, almost thought that he could. His family should have the first chance, though. Jane and Jacob might both be able in another year to get away to the new country so full of hope; and it was best that the old hulk should stay at home, perhaps. So ran his thoughts for these two, but he always stopped when he reached Sally, his youngest living child, and precious to him as the apple of his eye. She was the fairest of the family, and her father's darling above all the others. Her, at all events, he felt he could not part with. If she went away at all her mother and he must go too.

As yet "wee Sal," as she was called, though by this time nigh fourteen years old, had not been suffered to go out to service. She had got more schooling than the others, thanks to the better means that her father had during part of her childish years; thanks likewise to his partiality for her. In this you will say he was weak; but let him who is strong on such a point fling stones. I cannot blame Thomas much for committing so common a sin as to love most yearningly his youngest child; but I admit that his fondness was perhaps to her hurt. Not that she was taught to love idleness or things above her station. Far from that. Kept at home though she was, she had to work. In the summer season she helped her mother to tend the garden, and to carry flowers, vegetables, and fruit to Leamington for sale. Under her mother's eye she at other times learned something of laundry work. But her schooling; what could she do with that? Did it not tend to give her vain thoughts above her lot; for her lot was fixed more even than that of her brothers. The peasant maid could never hope to advance to aught beyond some kind of upper service in a rich man's family; a service often increasingly degrading in proportion as it is nominally high. She might become a ladies' maid, perhaps, and marry a butler in time, or she might fill her head with vanities, and in apeing those above her sink to the gutter. The love of Thomas for his child exposed her to many risks, when it took the form of getting old Brown to teach her all he knew. If she could only get to the new country at the other end of the world all that might be changed. She might be happy and prosperous as an Australian farmer's wife. Yes, that would be best; but they must all go. Neither Thomas nor his wife, who shared his partiality, could think of parting with Sally. Jacob might go first to help Tom to gather means to take out the rest; and Jane might even go with him could a way be found; but not Sally: that sacrifice would be too much.

In all probability the emigration plan might have been carried out in this sense that very winter, if an emigration agent could have been got to take Jacob and Jane, had not misfortune once more found the labourer and smitten his hopes. Jacob enlisted. He was by no means a bad boy, but like all youths, enjoyed what is called a bit of fun; and, in fun, he had betaken himself to a kind of hiring fair held in Warwick, in November, and called the "Mop." There was no need for him to go, as he was not out of work, but the day was a kind of prescriptive holiday, and others were going, so why not Jacob? Idle, careless, and brisk as a lark, the lad followed where others led; drank for the sake of good companions.h.i.+p more than his unaccustomed head could carry; and when in a wild, devil-may-care mood was picked up by a recruiting sergeant, who soon joked and argued him into taking the s.h.i.+lling. A neighbour saw the boy, half-tipsy, following the sergeant and his party through the fair with recruit's ribbons fluttering round his head, and rushed home to tell Thomas as fast as his legs could carry him. The old man was horror-struck; and the boy's mother broke into bitter wailing. Thomas, however, wasted no time in useless grief, but took the road for Warwick, within three minutes of hearing the news, in the hope of being in time to buy his boy off. He had an idea that if he managed to pay the smart-money before Jacob was sworn in, the lad might escape with little difficulty. But he was too late. The sergeant was too well up to his work to wait in Warwick all night, in order that parents might come in the morning and beleaguer him for their betrayed children. Long before Thomas reached the town and began his search for his son the sergeant had gone off with his entire netful to Birmingham.

As soon as Thomas found this to be the case he made for the railway station, intending to follow his boy without asking himself whether it would do any good. But there again he was baulked. The cheap train to Birmingham had pa.s.sed long before, a porter told him, and there was nothing that night but the late and dear express. For this Thomas had not enough money in addition to what would be required to buy off Jacob, so he had no help for it but to go home. This he did with a heart heavy enough. Well did he know that ere he could reach Birmingham to-morrow he would be too late. Recruiting sergeants do not linger at their work, especially after the army had been reduced by war and disease as it then had been in the Crimea. Before ten o'clock next morning Jacob, still dazed with yesterday's unwonted debauch, was sworn in before a Birmingham J.P., and not all the money his father possessed could then release him. Henceforth, till his years of service were out, he must go and kill or be killed at the bidding of these "sovereigns and statesmen," whose business it still, alas, is to make strife in the world.

This untoward event was in many ways a knock-down blow to the old labourer and his wife. She, however, sorrowed mostly on personal grounds, and dwelt on gloomy prospects of wounds and violent deaths as the only lot now open for her son--bone of her bone, and flesh of her flesh--whom she had nursed and tended from the womb only for this. Like a good housewife, she mourned also the loss of Jacob's wages, which not only helped to keep the wolf from the door, but also served to nourish the hope that one day all might yet see the new land of promise. If any savings could be pointed to they were always in the mother's eyes due to those wonderful earnings of her boy's.

Thomas shared these feelings with his wife, but he had others into which she did not enter. The emigration scheme had, perforce, to be given up, and that was to him a far more bitter thought than to his wife, who declared that she did not mind if they all went, but hung back at the thought of "putting one after another of her children into a living tomb," as she phrased it. But the deepest pain of all to Thomas probably lay in the humiliation he felt in having a son a soldier. The trade of murder, as he called it, was to his mind the most degrading to which a man's hands could be set. He firmly believed that standing armies were a mockery of the Almighty, and that the nations which fostered them would sooner or later sink to perdition beneath the blows of divine vengeance.

Armies led to wars, and wars were the curse of the world, he averred, and when contradicted was ready to prove to his antagonist that all the wars in which England had been engaged since the revolution of 1688, were dictated by the worst pa.s.sions of mankind. Either, he said, they were undertaken to consolidate the power of a rapacious faction over the lives, liberties, and means of the people at large, or they were actuated by mere b.e.s.t.i.a.l greed, by inordinate vanity and love of power, or by mulish obstinacy and hatred or fear of liberty, and it was amazing to hear what arrays of facts he brought forth in support of his thesis. As a general conclusion he, of course, urged that, but for kings and priests, most of the wars of the modern world would never have come about. He did not know which cause was most effective, but inclined to think it was the priests. Certainly the sight of ministers of Christ so-called, unctuously blessing red-handed and red-coated murderers by wholesale, and training their children to go and do likewise, was in his opinion one of the most revolting things under G.o.d's sky.

You can, therefore, well understand with what bitterness of heart he thought of the fate of his boy. He brooded over it; it became more terrible in his sight than an actual crime. If Jacob had stolen and been transported for breaking the law, Thomas could not have felt more shame and humiliation than now haunted him. He almost cursed his son, and he did unstintedly curse the system under which the lad had been caught up by the agent of the State and spirited away from his labour. How it was done he knew but too well; and when afterwards Jacob himself told the story, it only confirmed what he had all along felt to be true. The boy had never intended to enlist; but the drink, imprudently taken, had gone to his head. The sergeant first cajoled him, and then, when he had taken the fatal s.h.i.+lling, terrified him with threats of what would befall if he broke faith with the Queen. So he took the oaths and went away to practice the goose step, and moralise on the oddness of things in the world. An officer, he now learnt, could sell out at a high price and retire; but the common soldier belonged to the State, and had to be bought back therefrom if he wished to be free. For Jacob there came no such redress.

Gloom settled on the heart of his father, and on the little home in Ashbrook after this great blow, and, but for the spur of hard necessity, Thomas thought he should have laid down his burden altogether. Happily, duty called him to work for others, if not for himself; and work brought its usual blessing--a healing of the wounds and a revival of life in the heart. All was not yet lost, though the buffets of adversity were frequent and sore.

Indeed, in one sense Jacob's enlistment brought good to the family, for it gave Thomas work at Whitbury Farm. Once more, after so many vicissitudes, he came back to the old place. A changed place it proved to be, but, on the whole, the change was for the better. The work was hard, but the farmer was not brutal like the Pembertons, who had ruined themselves by wild living, been sold up, and had disappeared none knew whither.

Jacob himself had plenty of time to rue his folly, and he did rue it bitterly. At first in Chatham, and afterwards in various Irish barracks, he spent seven dreary years, wis.h.i.+ng many a time he were dead, and regretting that his fate did not lead him to India, where a mutineer's bullet might have ended his career. Possessing much of his father's energy of nature and many of his father's habits of thought, the idle and seemingly purposeless life of a barrack became at times almost more than the young man could endure. Had he fallen into the loose ways of many among his comrades, it is probable that he would have capped the folly of enlisting by the military crime of desertion. Fortunately he kept his soul clean, and managed to utilise some portion of his time in improving his mind. The mental wants of the soldier were not cared for in his time, as they have begun to be since; but there were a few books available in most barracks, and in Ireland a kindly old adjutant, who had himself risen from the ranks, discovered Jacob's thirst in time to afford him some a.s.sistance. Save for "providences" like these, and for the stout heart that grew within him as he developed into full manhood, Jacob's life as a soldier would have represented only wasted years.

Three more years in this way pa.s.sed over Thomas Wanless and his family--years marked by no incident of great importance. The dull uniformity of their struggles with the ills of life has no dramatic interest. Under it characters may be shaped and twisted like trees by the east wind; but the graduations of change are mostly imperceptible to those that endure the daily buffetings, and are beyond the scope of the chronicler. Some day in the lapse of years, a man wakes up suddenly to find himself changed, and looks back upon a former self with wonder and astonishment, with thankfulness, it may be, for the drastic cleansing he has endured, or with that flash of horror at the sudden vision of the pit into which he has all the time been slowly sinking. In these years, while a father labours for his children's bread, and thanks G.o.d that the bread comes to him for his labour, his children grow up, develop characters, a.s.sume att.i.tudes in the world he never suspects, bringing him joy or sorrow as the fruit is bitter or sweet. All is changing ever; life moves onward, and the one generation perceives not the path that the next shall follow. Ah! the mystery of life. What does it all mean? The wrong triumphs often; the high hopes are dashed; weariness and pain haunt us wherever we go; the fruit of the sweet blossom is ashes and exceeding great bitterness; yet we hope on, plod on, battle till the end comes--and the judgment: then perhaps we shall know.

As yet, however, the unkindly blows of a hard fate had not broken Thomas Wanless's spirit: far otherwise. His heart might fail him beneath the greater of his misfortunes, but when the storm had overpa.s.sed, his head rose again, his eye yet brightened, and the laughter of hope broke forth once more: so was it now. Steady work soothed the pain of Jacob's disgrace, and in time the boy's own cheerfulness and manifest improvement made his father begin to think good might be brought forth out of evil in this case also. His daughter Jane continued to do well, and was looking towards promotion in her sphere--such promotion as consists in being one among many fellows, instead of the solitary drudge in the family of a small retail merchant. With the higher wages that followed elevation, Jane hoped also to be able to help her parents more.

That was Jane's ambition, so far as confessed, and it did her credit.

There might be something behind that, which was her own; but for the present her father and mother stood first.

Then the news from Tom was ever good. He prospered with the colony of Victoria, where he had settled, and might in time be a rich man, though as yet his means were, for the most part, hid in the land he had bought.

Life, therefore, was not at all dark in those years of quiet toil, either for Thomas or his family; and yet a cloud was gathering on the horizon; a little cloud that might grow till all the life became wrapped in its darkness.

The enlistment of Jacob had compelled Sally to go to service like her sister. Thomas yielded to this necessity most reluctantly, and his friends, even his wife, said he was foolishly fond of the girl. He would not admit that it was over-fondness; it was solicitude, he said. An undefined feeling of dread haunted him about the last and best loved that was left. She was fairer than any girl of the village, and without being exactly giddy, she was thoughtless and merry-hearted; too easily led away; too guilelessly trustful of others. How could he let this tender, unprotected maiden go out into the world, and fight her life-battle alone among strangers? Many a prayer had he prayed in secret that this sacrifice might be spared; but in this also the heavens were as bra.s.s. The time had come when she must either go or starve, and with a heavy heart he gave his consent. It was hardly given when his wife in her turn woke up to the danger of the step. She then sought to bring Thomas to revoke the decision, and try one more year; but it was too late. Sally herself was now eager to go. Her pride was touched. She would no longer be a burden to her parents, and must take a place like her sister.

"But in another year, Sally, we may all be able to go to Australia," the mother pleaded.

"Well, I can work for money to help us to go there," was the answer; and the mother had to yield.

Sally found a place as drudge to a newly-married couple in Warwick--a young surgeon and his wife. They had imprudently married on his "prospects," and had to use many s.h.i.+fts to hide their poverty, lest the world, which can only measure men's worth by the length of their purses, should pa.s.s him by. It was thus a poor place, especially for one like Sally, who had been better educated than probably any one else of her cla.s.s in the whole s.h.i.+re; and the wages were poor. At first they gave her 1s. 6d. a-week with her food, but after six months they gave her 2s., partly to prevent neighbours from gossiping about their want of means.

Here the girl remained for two years, not because she liked the place, but because her parents told her that it was good to be able to say that she had been so long in one family. Then she removed to the household of a lawyer as housemaid, where two servants were kept, and had been in that place over a year when her father met with an accident which laid him up for many weeks. It seems that in building a rick he had somehow been knocked off by a sheaf flung up at him thoughtlessly before he had adjusted the previous one. He raised his one hand mechanically to catch it, and his other slipped from under him. Being near the edge, he rolled off heavily, striking the wheel of the waggon as he fell. The rick was high, and the fall so severe, that, when picked up and examined, Thomas was found to have badly bruised his shoulder and fractured two of his ribs.

A long and tedious illness followed, during which Thomas was unable to earn anything. Until young Tom could know and send money the old folks were therefore likely again to feel the pinch of want, and it would take many months to bring help from Australia. Some of the old h.o.a.rd was still left, but doctors' bills and necessary dainties soon made a hole in that. In nursing her husband, too, Mrs. Wanless was prevented from earning anything herself. There was no one to go to market with the little garden produce that might be to spare. Neighbours were helpful, but they could do little where all alike lived in daily converse with want. Thomas's master was kindly, and declared that he would not see them starve, but Thomas liked to be independent, and took umbrage at the tone in which the charity was offered.

Talking of these things, and of the difficulties of the future, one Sunday evening, when Sally was down from Warwick, the girl suddenly asked why she could not go to a better place where her wages might be of more use. She had only 3s. a week where she was, and felt sure she could earn more.

Her parents were for letting well alone. "All the extra money you can get, Sally, won't amount to much," her mother said, and her father urged her to wait for Tom's letter. Who knew that Tom might not be sending money to take them all away to the new country? But Sally was positive, according to her impulsive nature. She was now nearly 18, she said, and was sure she could earn more. "Besides, mother," she added, "I want to better myself. I am learning nothing where I am, and never will, and I hate messing about with so many children. They ought to keep a nurse, but they can't afford it, missis says; and I'm sure I'm nothing but a slave. Why should you object?"

Why, indeed. There were no good grounds for it in her eyes, and none tangible to her parents. The result, therefore, was that Sally sought and found a new place.

CHAPTER VIII.

INTRODUCES THE READER TO VERY ARISTOCRATIC COMPANY.

It so happened that what servants call "a good place" was not so difficult to find when Sally went to seek it, as it had been some years before. The growing wealth of a portion of the nation was telling every year with increased force on the demand for domestic servants; and at the same time manufacturers were everywhere drawing more and more of the female population into employments in the great industrial centres of the Midlands. In any case, therefore, Sally Wanless would probably soon have found a place of some kind in a gentleman's family; but, unknown to herself, her good looks had already been working in her behalf. She had attracted the attention of the housekeeper at the Grange one day that the two had chanced to meet in a grocer's shop in Warwick. When Sally went out the housekeeper asked after her, and told the grocer that she was just in want of "a still-room maid," whatever that may be. The grocer gave Sally a good character as far as he knew her, and said further that he believed the girl wanted a new place. What the housekeeper heard elsewhere also pleased her; and in due time Sally was engaged at the, to her, fabulous wages of 10 per annum. Perhaps, had Lady Harriet Wiseman known that the pretty girl who thus entered her house in the humble capacity of still-room maid, was the daughter of "that seditious old poaching scamp, Wanless," as the squires called Sally's father, she might have vetoed her housekeeper's action. But that finely-distilled aristocrat did not condescend to notice such trivial matters as the coming and going of menials. She barely knew the names of some of the oldest servants about the place, and when she had occasion to speak to any of them--a thing she avoided as much as possible--gave all alike the name of Jane. She viewed her domestic world from afar. She was of the G.o.ds, and her menials were of the sons and daughters of men.

To her their lives were unknown; of their hopes and feelings she knew less than she did of the varied dispositions of her dogs. They were there to minister to her every want and whim, to bend the knee, bate the breath, and lower the eye before her when she crossed their path, and if they did these things silently as machinery, it was well. Her sole duty was to find them food and wages, and she kept her contract. But if they failed in one iota they were dismissed.

It would be unfair to suppose that Lady Harriet was an exceptionally hard woman, because this was her relations.h.i.+p with her household. She was indeed nothing of the kind. On the contrary, in some respects she was a kind-hearted person enough, and would for example have turned away her housekeeper on the spot, had she been made aware that the servants were badly fed or uncomfortable in their bedrooms, or anything of that sort. Sins of that kind affected the reputation of her mansion, and jarred, moreover, on her sense of comfortableness. To have life flow easily, to see and feel none of the roughnesses of existence--this was Lady Harriet's ideal. For the rest--how could she help it if menials were low creatures? They were born so, and it was for her comfort probably that Providence thus ordered the gradations of society. She had been heard, moreover, to plume herself upon the exceptionally good treatment her servants got, and to declare that she knew it to be much better than that of her sister, who was the wife of a lord bishop of a neighbouring diocese, and a woman of fas.h.i.+on.

Lady Harriet was, in short, an average sample of the modern English aristocrat. Nay, in some respects she was better than the average woman of her cla.s.s, for she was gifted with some touch of the shrewd brains that had lifted her grandfather, the London clothier, to great wealth and an Irish peerage. In another sphere, as the parsons say, she might have distinguished herself as a woman of affairs, but she loved ease, disliked trouble, and wrapped her mind up in the refinements proper to high birth and breeding. First amongst these she placed exemption from all the cares and duties of maternity, and from the worries of household management. Her aim was not lofty, and even her ladys.h.i.+p had begun to fear that somehow her life had been a failure. A weary look was often seen on her face--visible to the meanest domestic--telling all who saw it that luxury could not insure any poor mortal from care any more than from disease and death. But cannot one trace the hideous grinning skull beneath the skin of the fairest and loftiest in the land? Care comes to all, and sorrow, and pain, and for years before Sally went to the Grange, the mistress thereof had felt the worm gnawing at her heart.

For one thing, her husband, now a man beyond sixty, was rapidly losing the little wits he had possessed. His life was to all appearance most prosperous. To the envy of many, he had made much money through the railway speculations of the preceding decade; and by material standard of the time should have been supremely happy. But he drank and over-ate himself, and his self-indulgences in these and other ways made him gouty and diseasedly fat. His life had thus become a misery to himself and to all around him, even before he had become really old; and now his memory was failing him, a sottish stupidity was stealing over his brain, so that it was with much difficulty that his wife could rouse him to attend to the most necessary affairs of his estates. Peevish and ill-conditioned when in pain, stupified with wine when well, and at all times of a dreary vacuity of mind, this pillar of the State, wielder of men's votes, arbiter of parish fates and men's fortunes, was not a lovable man to live with. To outsiders he might be an object of pity or scorn; but to his wife! Ah, well, the servants said she looked worried.

Let it pa.s.s.

And yet had this been all she might have been in a fas.h.i.+on happy, for she could turn off much of the ill-humour of her husband on his servants by simply avoiding him. Other troubles, however, were coming thick upon her, and making her look as old as the Squire, although she was nigh ten years younger. Three children of the five she had borne were alive--two daughters and a son. Of course the son, being also the heir, was made much of, fawned on by mother and menial alike, and equally, of course, he grew up a remarkable creature. Who has not known such without longing for a whip of scorpions, and a strong arm to wield it? One daughter had married a soldier--a showy man of good family but small fortune, who sold out, became stock-gambler, and bankrupt in the brief s.p.a.ce of eighteen months; and then bolted to Australia to try sheep-farming with a few hundreds given him by his friends to get rid of him. He had left his wife and three children to the care of his mother-in-law. The eldest daughter--eldest also of the family--was slightly deformed, and had never left home, though some poor curates had cast longing looks at her, hoping perhaps, that the money and influence she would have might be the means of bringing them preferment. But they were not men of family, and Lady Harriet would have none of them. The deformed daughter was left otherwise to her own devices; and was probably the happiest in the house, as she certainly was the gentlest. These were small troubles too, and Lady Harriet could not afford to make herself long unhappy over them; but it was otherwise with those of her son.

This pampered darling of his mother, this remarkable youth whose leading idea was that the world and all that was therein had been created expressly for him--if, indeed, he had ever stopped in his career of selfish l.u.s.t to form an idea so definite--this youth of many privileges, before whom the path of life was rolled smooth and carpeted, on whom the sun dare not s.h.i.+ne too freely nor any wintry storm beat untempered, was now causing his mother more agony than she ever imagined she could bear and live. She felt she was wronged somehow in having so much sorrow by one she so deeply loved. Had she not done everything for him all his life, given him all he asked, made the whole household his slaves, forbidden his masters to task his brain with too many studies, poured handfuls of pocket-money into his lap, and in all ways treated him like a demi-G.o.d? Yes, yes; she knew that no mother could have done more, felt it in her heart as she reviewed the past, and yet had not this precious boy been stabbing her to the heart every day of his life? Lady Harriet felt that the world was out of joint.

Others, less blind, will say that this nurture would have destroyed the n.o.blest of natures. On a commonplace mind like Cecil Wiseman's its effect was disastrous. The young man was, about the time of Sally Wanless's entry on service at the Grange, some twenty-four years of age, and handsome enough to look upon. When he liked his manners were engaging, and his conversation not without shrewdness. But its range was limited to matters of the stable. He had no acquaintance with literature outside the sporting papers and some filthy English novels. French he had never learned to read. He shone more in the stable than in drawing-rooms, and understood the philosophy of horse jockeys, or racing touts, better than the difference between right and wrong. If he had a pet ambition it was to "make a pot of money" on a horse, and if he had not been the heir to a great estate he might have distinguished himself as a horse-dealer, that is, had he not come to the treadmill before he got the chance.

The social position to which he was born saved him the trouble of choosing a profession, and from the grasp of the law, but it did not prevent him from being a criminal worse than many a poor wretch in the dock. A commission had been bought for him some years before in a regiment of dragoons, and by means of money he was now a captain, but there was little about him of the soldier. When not bawling on a race course he was lounging about the clubs of Pall Mall, playing billiard matches for high stakes, or losing money at cards with the freehandedness of a gentleman of fas.h.i.+on. What leisure these high occupations left him was devoted to the society of loose women, by whom his purse was just as freely emptied.