‘We’ll be better children,’ said Annie, as soon as she could speak. ‘An’ we’ll do better by mother as has been so good to us. The doctor’s feared she won’t be so strong again; but we’ll try to do well by her, we owe her that! Oh, I must be going; I am too tired already; but I’m glad to have seen you this once, Nat, good-night.’
They kissed and separated; and the next day, in the morning, Nat said farewell to his relations, and set off for the town; not again, perhaps, to be brought so close to his sister as in the white heat of penitence which for a while had made them one. Yet never in vain is it for two human souls to be brought thus near together before the throne of God; that evening must have remained as a sanctifying influence in the minds and the lives of Annie and of Nat. They were not soon to meet; he went to work in London; and Annie was to share with her mother the home of Mr Lee.
That morning passed on, and before the strokes of noon the whole air was full of the sound of wedding-bells. Alice Robson and Tim Nicol had a bright day for their marriage; and many were the friends who came to see the sight. Neither Jenny nor her daughter were present at the wedding—there were reasons why their absence was not astonishing; but they had sent their warmest good-will to the bridegroom and the bride, and with that a tea-service; and they received some wedding-cake. This marriage might not perhaps make old friendship closer, but their friends had been faithful to them all the same, and no tenderer memories cling about our days than those of the friends who have stood near our distress. Such faithfulness merits the best that earth can give, and even on earth it gains a sure reward.
And so our story draws to its close at length—the story of an episode in village-life, not of occurrences altogether ordinary, and yet not unlike much that passes day by day. In Warton the memory of the Salters was enduring, and the remembrance also of the events with which we have concerned ourselves—mingled, as I have said, with some natural dissatisfaction at a certain incompleteness of justice to be discovered in the tale. I have said that such discontent was natural—but, for my own part, I am not strictly just, and, however certain of the necessity of traps and cats, am liable to inclinations in favour of the safety of the mouse. And, for such reasons, I cannot bring myself to be sorry that the children of Jenny, though not always wise or right, had their feet restored to the paths of peace and comfort, and even to higher hopes than their birth warranted. I think the possession of these new-found relations did much to bring happiness to Mr Lee, shaken by the tragic event of his nephew’s death, and by the uncertainty in which his niece’s life was lost. The old man made efforts to discover Tina Gillan, but they proved fruitless, and at length he sought no more.
Poor Jenny! It seems to me I see her now, in the position of Mr Lee’s house-mistress and friend, a gentle creature, with a timid, patient manner, with quiet movements, and soft hair streaked with grey. Her memory had never entirely recovered from the physical strain of one dreadful New Year’s Eve; for her health had been broken before by many troubles, and it was not possible for her to regain her former strength. But she understood that her children were honoured and were happy, under the friendship and patronage of the Squire and Mr Lee, and that years only brought an added tenderness to the behaviour of her boy and girl to her. If she was glad it was with a quiet happiness—she knew not how she had deserved it, or, how it had come to her—only that her bark had floated at last into peaceful waters, after many years of clouded, troubled life. Perhaps Nat understood—Nat, happy, useful, honoured, with an ever-widening education, and with ever higher hopes; or perhaps Annie knew—beautiful, admired, and prosperous, in spite of the shadow of sorrow that rested always on her face; her children had more education than herself, and could understand better how things should come to be, could look back on the timid love that had trained and tended them, and in their worst moments had risen, and proved itself strong to save. Such love, unobtrusive, unpraised, unknown to fame, may be found in our homes through the whole length of our land; unrewarded sometimes—but the ‘Infinite Pity is sufficient’ for even the ‘infinite pathos’ of a mother’s life.
I was standing the other day by the side of a low tombstone, grey, green with age, lying horizontally in the grass, with winter bareness round it, itself chipped and defaced, without any inscription visible, and only a faint mark of a cross. And I remembered how in the summer months I had been attracted to it by a sight that made another kind of suggestiveness—the little blue speedwells which, springing close to it, converted it into harmony with their loveliness. So tender, so gracious, with such power to consecrate, are such influences as the mother’s love, which lay their soft colours against the hard stones of our lives, and transform that which might else seem sad and broken into beauty.
THE END
Transcriber’s Note
This transcription is based on scans made available by the British Library: