Читать книгу The Life of Thomas Wanless, Peasant - A. J. Wilson - Страница 3

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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.