"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.