The mother also was silent; but there was no mistaking the expression of her countenance. The subdued smile on her lips, and the bright tears that trembled in her eyes, as she raised them to Heaven, told me that she was following the same solemn train of thought with myself, and treasuring yet more deeply in her heart the sayings of her child.
There was a pause of some seconds, and the sound of little Annie's footsteps had just died away, when the stillness was again broken by her father's voice. "You were fortunate, sir," he said, "in leading her to the story of the homeward path; many visitors have considered it the most beautiful of all that the old man told. It was a great favourite with the child. I have often heard her repeating detached portions of it to herself, though I was not aware that she had found in them so deep a meaning.—It is strange, very strange," he added, thoughtfully, "for I cannot even now tell who could have explained them to her. I also have often looked back with wonder on the answers of the child. But there is a passage from Holy Scripture, which seems to be their best interpreter, and they never fail to recall it to my mind: "I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes."*
* Luke x. 21.
Poor Annie! My conversation with her gave a ray of brightness to a visit which otherwise had in it enough of gloom. Nor has this feeling been in any way changed by the early death of the child. There is still peace and joy in every thought connected with her, though within a few months of my first visit to the Asylum little Annie was laid in her quiet grave. She laboured but one short hour in the vineyard, and then was taken to the same home with the old man who had borne so long and so patiently all the burthen and heat of the day. Yet my own heart was a witness that even her little hour of labour had not been without its fruit. A romantic story was told concerning the cause of her death. It was said that she had never recovered the loss of her friend, but gradually pined away in consequence of it, and at length died of a broken heart. But I believed not the tale; for little Annie did not sorrow as those without hope; and though, perhaps, the cord of affection, that united her so closely to the old man, may have hastened her progress to the home to which he was gone, I do not think that her bereavement was the cause of her death. I had left her with the impression that she was not long for this world. I cannot exactly describe from whence this feeling arose. It was not merely because her cheek was wan, and her complexion delicate, and her little heart seemed to beat with too eager emotion for the frail prison in which it was confined; but there was something in her voice, look, and manner, which kept reminding me of the world of spirits; as though, in all her youth and innocence, she were walking on its very borders, and her gentle form might at any moment fade into the mist, and vanish from my view.
The more I reflected on this, the more sure I became that little Annie had lived her time, and that no sudden shock had broken prematurely the thread of life. I thought that this assurance might afford some comfort to her parents in their heavy affliction; for Annie was an only daughter. But when I called upon them, the mother alone was at home; and I soon found that she needed no consolation which I could afford her. She had her own secret store of treasure in every word that had fallen from her darling child. I shall never forget the look with which she said to me, "Ah, sir, I understood very little of her words while she was alive; but the moment she was gone, it seemed as though a light was shining upon them from another world, and I can read them plainly now." And then, after a pause, she added, "Do you remember, sir, on the very day you were with us, how she said, 'I will go home directly myself, and you shall follow me?' I remembered it well; and she saw from my countenance that I guessed her meaning. "Yes," she continued, as, in spite of every effort to suppress it, the big tear rolled down her cheek, "it was in order that her father and myself might learn to follow her, that little Annie was taken Home. He too, sir, has become since then an altered man."
A silent pressure of the hand was my only reply, for I felt that the afflicted mother had learnt more truly than I could teach her the lesson which was to be gathered from the death of her child.
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.]