‘If you were coming in, you’d better have come out of the rain, not stood idling there with that good-for-nothing lad. The new minister said he would be after you if you were taking up with bad company.’
‘Who told you I was with bad company?’ said Harold.
‘Why, I could see it! I hope he rebuked you both.’
‘He asked us if we could play at cricket—and he asked the pony’s name,’ said Harold, ‘if that’s what you call rebuking us!’
‘And what did he say to that boy?’
‘Oh! he told him he heard he was a stranger here, like himself, and asked how long he’d been here, and where he came from.’
‘And what did he say?’
‘He said he was from Upperscote Union—come out because he was big enough to keep himself, and come to look for work,’ said Harold. ‘He’s a right good chap, I’ll tell you, and I’ll bring him up to see Alfy one of these days!’
‘Bring up that dirty boy! I should like to see you!’ cried Ellen, makingsucha face. ‘I don’t believe a word of his coming out of the Union. I’m sure he’s run away out of gaol, by the look of him!’
‘Ellen—Harold—come down to your tea!’ called Mrs. King.
So they went down; and presently, while Mrs. King was gone up to give Alfred his tea, there came Mrs. Shepherd bustling across, with her black silk apron thrown over her cap with the crimson gauze ribbons. She wanted a bit of tape, and if there were none in the shop, Harold must match it in Elbury when he took the letters.
Ellen was rather familiar with Mrs. Shepherd, because she made her gowns, and they had some talk about the new clergyman. Mrs. Shepherd did not care for clergymen much; if she had done so, she might not have been so hard with her labourers. She was always afraid of their asking her to subscribe to something or other, so she gave it as her opinion, that she should never think it worth while to listen to such a very young man as that, and she hoped he would not stay; and then she said, ‘So your brother was taking up with that come-by-chance lad, I saw. Did he make anything out of him?’
‘He fancies him more than I like, or Mother either,’ said Ellen. ‘He says he’s out of Upperscote Union; but he’s a thorough impudent one, and owns he’s no father nor mother, nor nothing belonging to him. I think it is a deal more likely that he is run away from some reformatory, or prison.’
‘That’s just what I said to the farmer!’ said Mrs. Shepherd. ‘I said he was out of some place of that sort. I’m sure it’s a sin for the gentlemen to be setting up such places, raising the county rates, and pampering up a set of young rogues to let loose on us. Ay! ay! I’ll warrant he’s a runaway thief! I told the farmer he’d take him to his sorrow, but you see he is short of hands just now, and the men are so set up and grabbing, I don’t know how farmers is to live.’
So Mrs. Shepherd went away grumbling, instead of being thankful for the beautiful crop of hay, safely housed, before the thunder shower which had saved the turnips from the fly.
Ellen might have doubted whether she had done right in helping to give the boy a bad name, but just then in came the ostler from the Tankard with some letters.
‘Here!’ he said, ‘here’s one from one of the gentlemen lodging here fishing, to Cayenne. You’ll please to see how much there is to pay.’
Ellen looked at her Postal Guide, but she was quite at a fault, and she called up-stairs to Alfred to ask if he knew where she should look for Cayenne. He was rather fond of maps, and knew a good deal of geography for a boy of his age, but he knew nothing about this place, and she was just thinking of sending back the letter, to ask the gentleman where it was, when a voice said:
‘Try Guiana, or else South America.’
She looked up, and there were Paul’s dirty face and dirtier elbows, leaning over the half-door of the shop.
‘Why, how do you know?’ she said, starting back.
‘I learnt at school, Cayenne, capital of French Guiana.’ Sure enough Cayenne had Guiana to it in her list, and the price was found out.
But when this learned geographer advanced into the shop, and asked for a loaf, what a hand and what a sleeve did he stretch out! Ellen scarcely liked to touch his money, and felt all her disgust revive. But, for all that, and for all her fear of Harold’s running into mischief, what business had she to set it about that the stranger was an escaped convict?
Meanwhile, Alfred had plenty of food for dreaming over his fellow sufferer. It really seemed to quiet him to think of another in the same case, and how many questions he longed to have asked Mr. Cope! He wanted to know whether it came easier to Jem to be patient than to himself; whether he suffered as much wearing pain; whether he grieved over the last hope of using his limbs; and above all, the question he knew he never could bear to ask, whether Jem had the dread of death to scare his thoughts, though never confessed to himself.
He longed for Mr. Cope’s next visit, and felt strongly drawn towards that thought of Jem, yet ashamed to think of himself as so much less patient and submissive; so little able to take comfort in what seemed to soothe Jem, that it was the Lord’s doing. Could Jem think he had been a wicked boy, and take it as punishment?
‘I say,’ cried Harold, running up into his brother’s room, as soon as he had put away the pony, ‘do you know whether Paul is gone?’
‘It is always Paul, Paul!’ exclaimed Ellen; ‘I’m sure I hope he is.’
‘But why do you think he would be?’ asked Alfred.
‘Oh, didn’t you hear? He knows no more than a baby about anything, and so he turned the cows into Darnel meadow, and never put the hurdle to stop the gap—never thinking they could get down the bank; so the farmer found them in the barley, and if he did not run out against him downright shameful—though Paul up and told him the truth, that ’twas nobody else that did it.’
‘What, and turned him off?’
‘Well, that’s what I want to know,’ said Harold, going on with his tea. ‘Paul said to me he didn’t know how he could stand the like of that—and yet he didn’t like to be off—he’d taken a fancy to the place, you see, and there’s me, and there’s old Cæsar—and so he said he wouldn’t go unless the farmer sent him off when he came to be paid this evening—and old Skinflint has got him so cheap, I don’t think he will.’
‘For shame, Harold; don’t call names!’
‘Well, there he is,’ said Alfred, pointing into the farm-yard, towards the hay-loft door. This was over the cow-house in the gable end; and in the dark opening sat Paul, his feet on the top step of the ladder, and Cæsar, the yard-dog, lying by his side, his white paws hanging down over the edge, his sharp white muzzle and grey prick ears turned towards his friend, and his eyes casting such appealing looks, that he was getting more of the hunch of bread than probably Paul could well spare.
‘How has he ever got the dog up the ladder?’ cried Harold.
‘Well!’ said Mrs. King, ‘I declare he looks like a picture I have seen—’
‘Well, to be sure! who would go for to draw a picture of the like of that!’ exclaimed Ellen, pausing as she put on her things to carry home some work.
‘It was a picture of a Spanish beggar-boy,’ said Mrs. King; ‘and the housekeeper at Castlefort used to say that the old lord—that’s Lady Jane’s brother—had given six hundred pounds for it.’
Ellen set out on her walk with a sound of wonder quite beyond words. Six hundred pounds for a picture like Paul Blackthorn! She did not know that so poor and feeble are man’s attempts to imitate the daily forms and colourings fresh from the Divine Hand, that a likeness of the very commonest sight, if represented with something of its true spirit and life, wins a strange value, especially if the work of the great master-artists of many years ago.
And even the painter Murillo himself, though he might pleasantly recall on his canvas the notion of the bright-eyed, olive-tinted lad, resting after the toil of the day, could never have rendered the free lazy smile on his face, nor the gleam of the dog’s wistful eyes and quiver of its eager ears, far less the glow of setting sunlight that shed over all that warm, clear, ruddy light, so full of rest and cheerfulness, beautifying, as it hid, so many common things: the thatched roof of the barn, the crested hayrick close beside it; the waggons, all red and blue, that had brought it home, and were led to rest, the horses drooping their meek heads as they cooled their feet among the weed in the dark pond;—the ducks moving, with low contented quacks and quickly-wagging tails, in one long single file to their evening foraging in the dewy meadows; the spruce younger poultry pecking over the yard, staying up a little later than their elders to enjoy a few leavings in peace, free from the persecutions of the cross old king of the dung-hill;—all this left in shade, while the ruddy light had mounted to the roofs, gave brilliance to every round tuft of moss, and gleamed on the sober foliage of the old spreading walnut tree.
‘Poor lad,’ said Mrs. King, ‘it seems a pity he should come to such a rough life, when he seems to have got such an education! I hope he is not run away from anywhere.’
‘You’re as bad as Ellen, mother,’ cried Harold, ‘who will have it that he’s out of prison.’
‘No, not that,’ said Mrs. King; ‘but it did cross me whether he could have run away from school, and if his friends were in trouble for him.’
‘He never had any friends,’ said Harold, ‘nor he never ran away. He’s nothing but a foundling. They picked him up under a blackthorn bush when he was a baby, with nothing but a bit of an old plaid shawl round him.’
‘Did they ever know who he belonged to?’ asked Alfred.
‘Never; nor he doesn’t care if they don’t, for sure they could be no credit to him; but they that found him put him into the Union, and there an old woman, that they called Granny Moll, took to him. She had but one eye, he says; but, Mother, I do believe he never had another friend like her, for he got to pulling up the bits of grass, and was near crying when he said she was dead and gone, and then he didn’t care for nothing.’
‘But who taught him about Cayenne?’ asked Alfred.
‘Oh, that was the Union School. All the children went to school, and they had a terrible sharp master, who used to cut them over the head quite cruel, and was sent away at last for being such a savage; but Paul being always there, and having nothing else to do, you see, got on ever so far, and can work sums in his head downright wonderful. There came an inspector once who praised him up, and said he’d recommend him to a place where he’d be taught to be a school-master, if any one would pay the cost; but the guardians wouldn’t hear of it at no price, and were quite spiteful to find he was a good scholar, for fear, I suppose, that he’d know more than they.’
‘Hush, hush, Harold,’ said his mother; ‘wait till you have to pay the rates before you run out against the guardians.’
‘What do you mean, Mother?’
‘Why, don’t you see, the guardians have their duties to those who pay the rates, as well as those that have parish pay. What they have to do, is to mind that nobody starves, or the like; and their means comes out of the rates, out of my pocket, and the like of me, as well as my Lady’s and all the rich. Well, whatever they might like to do, it would not be serving us fairly to take more than was a bare necessity from us, to send your Master Paul and the like of him to a fine school. ’Tis for them to be just, and other folk to be generous with what’s their own.’
‘Mother talks as if she was a guardian herself!’ said Alfred in his funny way.
‘Ah, the collector’s going his rounds,’ responded Harold; and Mrs. King laughed good-humouredly, always glad to see her sick boy able to enjoy himself; but she sighed, saying, ‘Ay, and ill can I spare it, though thanks be to God that I’ve been as yet of them that pay, and not of them that receive.’
‘Go on the parish! Mother, what are you thinking of?’ cried both sons indignantly.
Poor Mrs. King was thinking of the long winter, and the heavy doctor’s bill, and feeling that, after all, suffering and humbling might not be so very far off; but she was too cheerful and full of trust to dwell on the thought, so she smiled and said, ‘I only said I was thankful, boys, for the mercy that has kept us up. Go on now, Harold; what about the boy?’
‘Why, I don’t know that he’d have gone if they had paid his expenses ever so much,’ said Harold, ‘for he’s got a great spirit of his own, and wouldn’t be beholden to any one, he said, now he could keep himself—he’d had quite enough of the parish and its keep; so he said he’d go on the tramp till he got work; and they let him out of the Union with just the clothes to his back, and a shilling in his pocket. ’Twas the first time he had ever been let out of bounds since he was picked up under the tree; and he said no one ever would guess the pleasure it was to have nobody to order him here and there, and no bounds round him; and he quite hated the notion of getting inside walls again, as if it was a prison.’
‘Oh, I know! I can fancy that!’ cried Alfred, raising himself and panting; ‘and where did he go first?’
‘First, he only wanted to get as far from Upperscote as ever he could, so he walked on; I can’t say how he lived, but he didn’t beg; he got a job here and a job there; but there are not so many things he knows the knack of, having been at school all his life. Once he took up with a man that sold salt, to draw his cart for him, but the man swore at him so awfully he could not bear it, and beat him too, so he left him, and he had lived terrible hard for about a month before he came here! So you see, Mother, there’s not one bit of harm in him; he’s a right good scholar, and never says a bad word, nor has no love for drink; so you won’t be like Ellen, and be always at me for going near him?’
‘You’re getting a big boy, Harold, and it is lonely for you,’ said Mrs. King reluctantly; ‘and if the lad is a good lad I’d not cast up his misfortune against him; but I must say, I should think better of him if he would keep himself a little bit cleaner and more decent, so as he could go to church.’
Harold made a very queer face, and said, ‘How is he to do it up in the hay-loft, Mother? and he ha’n’t got enough to pay for lodgings, nor for washing, nor to change.’
‘The river is cheap enough,’ said Alfred. ‘Do you remember when we used to bathe together, Harold, and go after the minnows?’
‘Ay, but he don’t know how; and then they did plague him so in the Union, that he’s got to hate the very name of washing—scrubbing them over and cutting their hair as if they were in gaol.’
‘Poor boy! he is terribly forsaken,’ said Mrs. King compassionately.
‘You may say that!’ returned Harold; ‘why, he’s never so much as seen how folks live at home, and wanted to know if you were most like old Moll or the master of the Union!’
Alfred went into such a fit of laughter as almost hurt him; but Mrs. King felt the more pitiful and tender towards the poor deserted orphan, who could not even understand what a mother was like, and the tears came into her eyes, as she said, ‘Well, I’m glad he’s not a bad boy. I hope he thinks of the Father and the Home that he has above. I say, Harold, against next Sunday I’ll look out Alfred’s oldest shirt for him to put on, and you might bring me his to wash, only mind you soak it well in the river first.’
Harold quite flushed with gratitude for his mother’s kindness, for he knew it was no small effort in one so scrupulously and delicately clean, and with so much work on her hands; but Mrs. King was one who did her alms by her trouble when she had nothing else to give. Alfred smiled and said he wondered what Ellen would say; and almost at the same moment Harold shot down-stairs, and was presently seen standing upon Paul’s ladder talking to him; then Paul rose up as though to come down, and there was much fun going on, as to how Cæsar was to be got down; for, as every one knows, a dog can mount a ladder far better than he can descend; and poor Cæsar stretched out his white paw, looked down, seemed to turn giddy, whined, and looked earnestly at his friends till they took pity on him and lifted him down between them, stretching out his legs to their full length, like a live hand-barrow.
A few seconds more, and there was a great trampling of feet, and then in walked Harold, exclaiming, ‘Here he is!’ And there he stood, shy and sheepish, with rusty black shag by way of hair, keen dark beads of eyes, and very white teeth; but all the rest, face, hands, jacket, trousers, shoes, and all, of darker or lighter shades of olive-brown; and as to the rents, one would be sorry to have to count them; mending them would have been a thing impossible. What a difference from the pure whiteness of everything around Alfred! the soft pink of the flush of surprise on his delicate cheek, and the wavy shine on his light hair. A few months ago, Alfred would have been as ready as his brother to take that sturdy hand, marbled as it was with dirt, and would have heeded all drawbacks quite as little; but sickness had changed him much, and Paul was hardly beside his couch before the colour fleeted away from his cheek, and his eye turned to his mother in such distress, that she was obliged to make a sign to Harold in such haste that it looked like anger, and to mutter something about his being taken worse. And while she was holding the smelling salts to him, and sprinkling vinegar over his couch, they heard the two boys’ voices loud under the window, Paul saying he should never come there again, and Harold something about people being squeamish and fine.
It hurt Alfred, and he burst out, almost crying, ‘Mother! Mother, now isn’t that too bad!’
‘It is very thoughtless,’ said Mrs. King sorrowfully; ‘but you know everybody has their feelings, Alfred, and I am sorry it happened so.’
‘I’m sure I couldn’t help it,’ said Alfred, as if his mother were turning against him. ‘Harold had better have brought up the farmer’s whole stable at once!’
‘When you were well, you did not think of such things any more than he does.’
Alfred grunted. He could not believe that; and he did not feel gently when his brother shewed any want of consideration; but his mother thought he would only grow crosser by dwelling on the unlucky subject, so she advised him to lie still and rest before his being moved to bed, and went down herself to finish some ironing.
Presently Alfred saw the Curate coming over the bridge with quick long steps, and this brought to his mind that he had been wishing to hear more of the poor crippled boy. He watched eagerly, and was pleased to see Mr. Cope turn in at the wicket, and presently the tread upon the stairs was heard, and the high head was lowered at the door.
‘Good evening, Alfred; your mother told me it would not disturb you if I came up alone;’ and he began to inquire into his amusements and occupations, till Alfred became quite at home with him, and at ease, and ventured to ask, ‘If you please, Sir, do you ever hear about Jem now?’ and as Mr. Cope looked puzzled, ‘the boy you told me of, Sir, that fell off the scaffold.’
‘Oh, the boy at Liverpool! No, I only saw him once when I was staying with my cousin; but I will ask after him if you wish to hear.’
‘Thank you, Sir. I wanted to know if he had been a bad boy.’
‘That I cannot tell. Why do you wish to know? Was it because he had such an affliction?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘I don’t think that is quite the way to look at troubles,’ said Mr. Cope. ‘I should think his accident had been a great blessing to him, if it took him out of temptation, and led him to think more of God.’
‘But isn’t it punishment?’ said Alfred, not able to get any farther; but Mr. Cope felt that he was thinking of himself more than of Jem.
‘All our sufferings in this life come as punishment of sin,’ he said. ‘If there had been no sin, there would have been no pain; and whatever we have to bear in this life is no more than is our due, whatever it may be.’
‘Every one is sinful,’ said Alfred slowly; ‘but why have some more to bear than others that may be much worse?’
‘Did you never think it hard to be kept strictly, and punished by your good mother?’
Alfred answered rather fretfully, ‘But if it is good to be punished, why ain’t all alike?’
‘God in His infinite wisdom sees the treatment that each particular nature needs. Some can be better trained by joy, and some by grief; some may be more likely to come right by being left in active health; others, by being laid low, and having their faults brought to mind.’
Alfred did not quite choose to take this in, and his answer was half sulky:
‘Bad boys are quite well!’
‘And a reckoning will be asked of them. Do not think of other boys. Think over your past life, of which I know nothing, and see whether you can believe, after real looking into it, that you have done nothing to deserve God’s displeasure. There are other more comforting ways of bringing joy out of pain; but of this I am sure, that none will come home to us till we own from the bottom of our heart, that whatever we suffer in this life, we suffer most justly for the punishment of our sins. God bless and help you, my poor boy. Good night.’
With these words he went down-stairs, for well he knew that while Alfred went on to justify himself, no peace nor joy could come to him, and he thought it best to leave the words to work in, praying in his heart that they might do so, and help the boy to humility and submission.
Finding Mrs. King in her kitchen, he paused and said, ‘We shall have a Confirmation in the spring, Mrs. King; shall not you have some candidates for me?’
‘My daughter will be very glad, thank you, Sir; she is near to seventeen, and a very good girl to me. And Harold, he is but fourteen—would he be old enough, Sir?’
‘I believe the Bishop accepts boys as young; and he might be started in life before another opportunity.’
‘Well, Sir, he shall come to you, and I hope you won’t think him too idle and thoughtless. He’s a good-hearted boy, Sir; but it is a charge when a lad has no father to check him.’
‘Indeed it is, Mrs. King; but I think you must have done your best.’
‘I hope I have, Sir,’ she said sadly; ‘I’ve tried, but my ability is not much, and he is a lively lad, and I’m sometimes afraid to be too strict with him.’
‘If you have taught him to keep himself in order, that’s the great thing, Mrs. King; if he has sound principles, and honours you, I would hope much for him.’
‘And, Sir, that boy he has taken a fancy to; he is a poor lost lad who never had a home, but Harold says he has been well taught, and he might take heed to you.’
‘Thank you, Mrs. King; I will certainly try to speak to him. You said nothing of Alfred; do you think he will not be well enough?’
‘Ah! Sir,’ she said in her low subdued voice, ‘my mind misgives me that it is not for Confirmation that you will be preparing him.’
Mr. Cope started. He had seen little of illness, and had not thought of this. ‘Indeed! does the doctor think so ill of him? Do not these cases often partially recover?’
‘I don’t know, Sir; Mr. Blunt does not give much account of him,’ and her voice grew lower and lower; ‘I’ve seen that look in his father’s and his brother’s face.’
She hid her face in her handkerchief as if overpowered, but looked up with the meek look of resignation, as Mr. Cope said in a broken voice, ‘I had not expected—you had been much tried.’
‘Yes, Sir. The Will of the Lord be done,’ she said, as if willing to turn aside from the dark side of the sorrow that lay in wait for her; ‘but I’m thankful you are come to help my poor boy now—he frets over his trouble, as is natural, and I’m afraid he should offend, and I’m no scholar to know how to help him.’
‘You can help him by what is better than scholarship,’ said Mr. Cope; and he shook her hand warmly, and went away, feeling what a difference there was in the ways of meeting affliction.
‘The axe is laid to the root of the tree,’ was said by the Great Messenger, when the new and better Covenant was coming to pierce, try, and search into, the hearts of men.
Something like this always happens, in some measure, whenever closer, clearer, and more stringent views of faith and of practice are brought home to Christians. They do not always take well the finding that more is required of them than they have hitherto fancied needful; and there are many who wince and murmur at the sharp piercing of the weapon which tries their very hearts; they try to escape from it, and to forget the disease that it has touched, and at first, often grow worse rather than better. Well is it for them if they return while yet there is time, before blindness have come over their eyes, and hardness over their heart.
Perhaps this was the true history of much that grieved poor Mrs. King, and distressed Ellen, during the remainder of the summer. Anxious as Mrs. King had been to bring her sons up in the right way, there was something in Mr. Cope’s manner of talking to them that brought things closer home to them, partly from their being put in a new light, and partly from his being a man, and speaking with a different kind of authority.
Alfred did not like his last conversation—it was little more than his mother and Miss Selby had said—but then he had managed to throw it off, and he wanted to do so again. It was pleasanter to him to think himself hardly treated, than to look right in the face at all his faults; he knew it was of no use to say he had none, so he lumped them all up by calling himself a sinful creature, like every one else; and thus never felt the weight of them at all, because he never thought what they were.
And yet, because Mr. Cope’s words had made him uneasy, he could not rest in this state; he was out of temper whenever the Curate’s name was spoken, and accused Ellen of bothering about him as much as Harold did about Paul Blackthorn; and if he came to see him, he made himself sullen, and would not talk, sometimes seeming oppressed and tired, and unable to bear any one’s presence, sometimes leaving Ellen to do all the answering, dreading nothing so much as being left alone with the clergyman. Mr. Cope had offered to read prayers with him, and he could not refuse; but he was more apt to be thinking that it was tiresome, than trying to enter into what, poor foolish boy, would have been his best comfort.
To say he was cross when Mr. Cope was there, would be saying much too little; there was scarcely any time when he was not cross; he was hardly civil even to Miss Jane, so that she began to think it was unpleasant to him to have her there; and if she were a week without calling, he grumbled hard thoughts about fine people; he was fretful and impatient with the doctor; and as to those of whom he had no fears, he would have been quite intolerable, had they loved him less, or had less pity on his suffering.
He never was pleased with anything; teased his mother half the night, and drove Ellen about all day. She, good girl, never said one word of impatience, but bore it all with the sweetest good humour; but her mother now and then spoke severely for Alfred’s own good, and then he made himself more miserable than ever, and thought she was unkind and harsh, and that he was very much to be pitied for having a mother who could not bear with her poor sick boy. He was treating his mother as he was treating his Father in Heaven.
How Harold fared with him may easily be guessed—how the poor boy could hardly speak or step without being moaned at, till he was almost turned out of his own house; and his mother did not know what to do, for Alfred was really very ill, and fretting made him worse, and nothing could be so bad for his brother as being driven out from home, to spend the long summer evenings as he could.
Ellen would have been thankful now, had Paul Blackthorn been the worst company into which Harold fell. Not that Paul was a bit cleaner; on the contrary, each day could not fail to make him worse, till, as Ellen had once said, you might almost grow a crop of radishes upon his shoulders.
Mrs. King’s kind offer of washing his shirt had come to nothing. She asked Harold about it, and had for answer, ‘Do you think he would, after the way you served him?’
Either he was affronted, or he was ashamed of her seeing his rags, or, what was not quite impossible, there was no shirt at all in the case; and he had a sturdy sort of independence about him, that made him always turn surly at any notion of anything being done for him for charity.
How or why he stayed on with the farmer was hard to guess, for he had very scanty pay, and rough usage; the farmer did not like him; the farmer’s wife scolded him constantly, and laid on his shoulders all the mischief that was done about the place; and the shuffler gave him half his own work to do, and hunted him about from dawn till past sunset. He was always going at the end of every week, but never gone; perhaps he had undergone too much in his wanderings, to be ready to begin them again; or perhaps either Cæsar or Harold, one or both, kept him at Friarswood. And there might be another reason, too, for no one had ever spoken to him like Mr. Cope. Very few had ever thrown him a kindly word, or seemed to treat him like a thing with feelings, and those few had been rough and unmannerly; but Mr. Cope’s good-natured smile and pleasant manner had been a very different thing; and perhaps Paul promised to come to the Confirmation class, chiefly because of the friendly tone in which he was invited.
When there, he really liked it. He had always liked what he was taught, apart from the manner of teaching; and now both manner and lessons were delightful to him. His answers were admirable, and it was not all head knowledge, for very little more than a really kind way of putting it was needed, to make him turn in his loneliness to rest in the thought of the ever-present Father. Hard as the discipline of his workhouse home had been, it had kept him from much outward harm; the little he had seen in his wanderings had shocked him, and he was more untaught in evil than many lads who thought themselves more respectable, so there was no habit of wickedness to harden and blunt him; and the application of all he had learnt before, found his heart ready.
He had not gone to church since he left the workhouse: he did not think it belonged to vagabonds like him; besides, he always felt walls like a prison; and he had not profited much by the workhouse prayers, which were read on week-days by the master, and on Sundays by a chaplain, who always had more to do than he could manage, and only went to the paupers when they were very ill. But when Mr. Cope talked to him of the duty of going to church, he said, ‘I will, Sir;’ and he sat in the gallery with the young lads, who were not quite as delicate as Alfred.
The service seemed to rest him, and to be like being brought near a friend; and he had been told that church might always be his home. He took a pleasure in going thither—the more, perhaps, that he rather liked to shew how little he cared for remarks upon his appearance. There was a great deal of independence about him; and, having escaped from the unloving maintenance of the parish, while he had as yet been untaught what affection or gratitude meant, hewouldnot be beholden to any one.
Scanty as were his wages, he would accept nothing from anybody; he daily bought his portion of bread from Mrs. King, but it was of no use for her to add a bit of cheese or bacon to it; he never would see the relish, and left it behind; and so he never would accept Mr. Cope’s kind offers of giving him a bit of supper in his kitchen, perhaps because he was afraid of being said to go to the Rectory for the sake of what he could get.
He did not object to the farmer’s beer, which was sometimes given him when any unusual extra work had been put on him. That was his right, for in truth the farmer did not pay him the value of his labour, and perhaps disliked him the more, because of knowing in his conscience that this was shameful extortion.
However, just at harvest time, when Paul’s shoes had become very like what may be sometimes picked up by the roadside, Mr. Shepherd did actually bestow on him a pair that did not fit himself! Harold came home quite proud of them.
However, on the third day they were gone, and the farmer’s voice was heard on the bridge, rating Paul violently for having changed them away for drink.
Mrs. King felt sorrowful; but, as Ellen said, ‘What could you expect of him?’ In spite of the affront, there was a sort of acquaintance now over the counter between Mrs. King and young Blackthorn; and when he came for his bread, she could not help saying, ‘I’m sorry to see you in those again.’
‘Why, the others hurt me so, I could hardly get about,’ said Paul.
‘Ah! poor lad, I suppose your feet has got spread with wearing those old ones; but you should try to use yourself to decent ones, or you’ll soon be barefoot; and I do think it was a pity to drink them up.’
‘That’s all the farmer, Ma’am. He thinks one can’t do anything but drink.’
‘Well, what is become of them?’
‘Why, you see, Ma’am, they just suited Dick Royston, and he wanted a pair of shoes, and I wanted a Bible and Prayer-book, so we changed ’em.’
When Ellen heard this, she could not help owning that Paul was a good boy after all, though it was in an odd sort of way. But, alas! when next he was to go to Mr. Cope, there was a hue-and-cry all over the hay-loft for the Prayer-book. There was no place to put it safely, or if there had been, Poor Paul was too great a sloven to think of any such thing; and as it was in a somewhat rubbishy state to begin with, it was most likely that one of the cows had eaten it with her hay; and all that could be said was, that it would have been worse if it had been the Bible.
As to Dick Royston, to find that he would change away his Bible for a pair of shoes, made Mrs. King doubly concerned that he should be a good deal thrown in Harold’s way. There are many people who neglect their Bibles, and do not read them; but this may be from thoughtlessness or press of care, and is not like the wilful breaking with good, that it is to part with the Holy Scripture, save under the most dire necessity; and Dick was far from being in real want, nor was he ignorant, like Mr. Cope’s poor Jem, for he had been to school, and could read well; but he was one of those many lads, who, alas! are everywhere to be found, who break loose from all restraint as soon as they can maintain themselves. They do their work pretty well, and are tolerably honest; but for the rest—alas! they seem to live without God. Prayers and Church they have left behind, as belonging to school-days; and in all their strength and health, their days of toil, their evenings of rude diversion, their Sundays of morning sleep, noonday basking in the sun, evening cricket, they have little more notion of anything concerning their souls than the horses they drive. If ever a fear comes over them, it seems a long long way off, a whole life-time before them; they are awkward, and in dread of one another’s jeers and remarks; and if they ever wish to be better, they cast it from them by fancying that time must steady them when they have had their bit of fun, or that something will come from somewhere to change them all at once, and make it easy to them to be good—as if they were not making it harder each moment.
This sort of lad had been utterly let alone till Mr. Cope came; and Lady Jane and the school-master felt it was dreary work to train up nice lads in the school, only to see them run riot, and forget all good as soon as they thought themselves their own masters.
Mr. Cope was anxious to do the best he could for them, and the Confirmation made a good opportunity; but the boys did not like to be interfered with—it made them shy to be spoken to; and they liked lounging about much better than having to poke into that mind of theirs, which they carried somewhere about them, but did not like to stir up. They had no notion of going to school again—which no one wanted them to do—nor to church, because it was like little boys; and they wouldn’t be obliged.
So Mr. Cope made little way with them; a few who had better parents came regularly to him, but others went off when they found it too much trouble, and behaved worse than ever by way of shewing they did not care. This folly had in some degree taken possession of Harold; and though he could not be as bad as were some of the others, he was fast growing impatient of restraint, and worried and angry, as if any word of good advice affronted him. Driven from home by the fear of disturbing Alfred, he was left the more to the company of boys who made him ashamed of being ordered by his mother; and there was a jaunty careless style about all his ways of talking and moving, that shewed there was something wrong about him—he scorned Ellen, and was as saucy as he dared even to his mother; and though Mr. Cope found him better instructed than most of his scholars, he saw him quite as idle, as restless at church, and as ready to whisper and grin at improper times, as many who had never been trained like him.
One August Sunday afternoon, Mrs. King was with Alfred while Ellen was at church. He was lying on his couch, very uncomfortable and fretful, when to the surprise of both, a knock was heard at the door. Mrs. King looked out of the window, and a smart, hard-looking, pigeon’s-neck silk bonnet at once nodded to her, and a voice said, ‘I’ve come over to see you, Cousin King, if you’ll come down and let me in. I knew I should find you at home.’
‘Betsey Hardman!’ exclaimed Alfred, in dismay; ‘you won’t let her come up here, Mother?’
‘Not if I can help it,’ said Mrs. King, sighing. If there were a thing she disliked above all others, it was Sunday visiting.
‘You must help it, Mother,’ said Alfred, in his most pettish tones. ‘I won’t have her here, worrying with her voice like a hen cackling. Say you won’t let her come her!’
‘Very well,’ said Mrs. King, in doubt of her own powers, and in haste to be decently civil.
‘Say you won’t,’ repeated Alfred. ‘Gadding about of a Sunday, and leaving her old sick mother—more shame for her! Promise, Mother!’
He had nearly begun to cry at his mother’s unkindness in running down-stairs without making the promise, for, in fact, Mrs. King had too much conscience to gain present quiet for any one by promises she might be forced to break; and Betsey Hardman was only too well known.
Her mother was an aunt of Alfred’s father, an old decrepit widow, nearly bed-ridden, but pretty well to do, by being maintained chiefly by her daughter, who made a good thing of taking in washing in the suburbs of Elbury, and always had a girl or two under her. She had neither had the education, nor the good training in service, that had fallen to Mrs. King’s lot; and her way of life did not lead to softening her tongue or temper. Ellen called her vulgar, and though that is not a nice word to use, she was coarse in her ways of talking and thinking, loud-voiced, and unmannerly, although meaning to be very good-natured.
Alfred lay in fear of her step, ten times harder than Harold’s in his most boisterous mood, coming clamp clamp! up the stairs; and her shrill voice—the same tone in which she bawled to her deaf mother, and hallooed to her girls when they were hanging out the clothes in the high wind—coming pitying him—ay, and perhaps her whole weight lumbering down on the couch beside him, shaking every joint in his body! His mother’s ways, learnt in the Selby nursery, had made him more tender, and more easily fretted by such things, than most cottage lads, who would have been used to them, and never have thought of not liking to have every neighbour who chose running up into the room, and talking without regard to subject or tone.
He listened in a fright to the latch of the door, and the coming in. Betsey’s voice came up, through every chink of the boards, whatever she did herself; and he could hear every word of her greeting, as she said how it was such a fine day, she said to Mother she would take a holiday, and come and see Cousin King and the poor lad: it must be mighty dull for him, moped up there.
Stump! stump! Was she coming? His mother was answering something too soft for him to hear.
‘What, is he asleep?’
‘O Mother, must you speak the truth?’
‘Bless me! I should have thought a little cheerful company was good for him. Do you leave him quite alone? Well—’ and there was a frightful noise of the foot of the heaviest chair on the floor. ‘I’ll sit down and wait a bit! Is he so very fractious, then?’
What was his mother saying? Alfred clenched his fist, and grinned anger at Betsey with closed teeth. There was the tiresome old word, ‘Low—ay, so’s my mother; but you should rise his spirits with company, you see; that’s why I came over; as soon as ever I heard that there wasn’t no hope of him, says I to Mother—’
What? What was that she had heard? There was his mother, probably trying to restrain her voice, for it came up now just loud enough to make it most distressing to try to catch the words, which sounded like something pitying. ‘Ay, ay—just like his poor father; when they be decliny, it will come out one ways or another; and says I to Mother, I’ll go over and cheer poor Cousin King up a bit, for you see, after all, if he’d lived, he’d be nothing but a burden, crippled up like that; and a lingering job is always bad for poor folks.’
Alfred leant upon his elbow, his eyes full stretched, but feeling as if all his senses had gone into his ears, in his agony to hear more; and he even seemed to catch his mother’s voice, but there was no hope in that; it was of her knowing it would be all for the best; and the sadness of it told him that she believed the same as Betsey. Then came, ‘Yes; I declare it gave me such a turn, you might have knocked me down with a feather. I asked Mr. Blunt to come in and see what’s good for Mother, she feels so weak at times, and has such a noise in her head, just like the regiment playing drums, she says, till she can’t hardly bear herself; and so what do you think he says? Don’t wrap up her head so warm, says he—a pretty thing for a doctor to say, as if a poor old creature like that, past seventy years old, could go without a bit of flannel to her head, and her three night-caps, and a shawl over them when there’s a draught. I say, Cousin, I ha’n’t got much opinion of Mr. Blunt. Why don’t you get some of them boxes of pills, that does cures wonderful? Ever so many lords and ladies cured of a perplexity fit, by only just taking an imposing draught or two.’
Another time Alfred would have laughed at the very imposing draught, that was said to cure lords and ladies of this jumble between apoplexy and paralysis; but this was no moment for laughing, and he was in despair at fancying his mother wanted to lead her off on the quack medicine; but she went on.
‘Well, only read the papers that come with them. I make my girl Sally read ’em all to me, being that she’s a better scholar; and the long words is quite heavenly—I declare there ain’t one of them shorter than peregrination. I’d have brought one of them over to shew you if I hadn’t come away in a hurry, because Evans’s cart was going out to the merry orchard, and says I to Mother, Well, I’ll get a lift now there’s such a chance to Friarswood: it’ll do them all a bit of good to see a bit of cheerful company, seeing, as Mr. Blunt says, that poor lad is going after his father as fast as can be. Dear me, says I, you don’t say so, such a fine healthy-looking chap as he was. Yes, he says, but it’s in the constitution; it’s getting to the lungs, and he’ll never last out the winter.’
Alfred listened for the tone of his mother’s voice; he knew he should judge by that, even without catching the words—low, subdued, sad—he almost thought she began with ‘Yes.’
All the rest that he heard passed by him merely as a sound, noted no more than the lowing of the cattle, or the drone of the thrashing machine. He lay half lifted up on his pillows, drawing his breath short with apprehension; his days were numbered, and death was coming fast, fast, straight upon him. He felt it within himself—he knew now the meaning of the pain and sinking, the shortness of breath and choking of throat that had been growing on him through the long summer days; he was being ‘cut off with pining sickness,’ and his sentence had gone forth. He would have screamed for his mother in the sore terror and agony that had come over him, in hopes she might drive the notion from him; but the dread of seeing her followed by that woman kept his lips shut, except for his long gasps of breath.
And she could not keep him—Mr. Blunt could not keep him; no one could stay the hand that had touched him! Prayer! They had prayed for his father, for Charlie, but it had not been God’s Will. He had himself many times prayed to recover, and it had not been granted—he was worse and worse.
Moreover, whither did that path of suffering lead? Up rose before Alfred the thought of living after the unknown passage, and of answering for all he had done; and now the faults he had refused to call to mind when he was told of chastisement, came and stood up of themselves. Bred up to know the good, he had not loved it; he had cared for his own pleasure, not for God; he had not heeded the comfort of his widowed mother; he had been careless of the honour of God’s House, said and heard prayers without minding them; he had been disrespectful and ill-behaved at my Lady’s—he had been bad in every way; and when illness came, how rebellious and murmuring he had been, how unkind he had been to his patient mother, sister, and brother; and when Mr. Cope had told him it was meant to lead him to repent, he would not hear; and now it was too late, the door would be shut. He had always heard that there was a time when sorrow was no use, when the offer of being saved had been thrown away.
When Ellen came in, and after a short greeting to Betsey Hardman, went up-stairs, she found Alfred lying back on his pillow, deadly white, the beads of dew standing on his brow, and his breath in gasps. She would have shrieked for her mother, but he held out his hand, and said, in a low hoarse whisper, ‘Ellen, is it true?’
‘What, Alfy dear? What is the matter?’
‘Whatshesays.’
‘Who? Betsey Hardman? Dear dear Alf, is it anything dreadful?’
‘That I shall die,’ said Alfred, his eyes growing round with terror again. ‘That Mr. Blunt said I couldn’t last out the winter.’
‘Dear Alfy, don’t!’ cried Ellen, throwing her arms round him, and kissing him with all her might; ‘don’t fancy it! She’s always gossiping and gadding about, and don’t know what she says, and she’d got no business to tell stories to frighten my darling!’ she exclaimed, sobbing with agitation. ‘I’m sure Mr. Blunt never said no such thing!’
‘But Mother thinks it, Ellen.’
‘She doesn’t, she can’t!’ cried Ellen vehemently; ‘I know she doesn’t, or she could never go about as she does. I’ll call her up and ask her, to satisfy you.’
‘No, no, not while that woman is there!’ cried Alfred, holding her by the dress; ‘I’ll not havehercoming up.’
Even while he spoke, however, Mrs. King was coming. Betsey had spied an old acquaintance on the way from church, and had popped out to speak to her, and Mrs. King caught that moment for coming up. She understood all, for she had been sitting in great distress, lest Alfred should be listening to every word which she was unable to silence, and about which Betsey was quite thoughtless. So many people of her degree would talk to the patient about himself and his danger, and go on constantly before him with all their fears, and the doctor’s opinions, that Betsey had never thought of there being more consideration and tenderness shewn in this house, nor that Mrs. King would have hidden any pressing danger from the sick person; but such plain words had not yet passed between her and Mr. Blunt; and though she had long felt what Alfred’s illness would come to, the perception had rather grown on her than come at any particular moment.
Now when Ellen, with tears and agitation, asked what that Betsey had been saying to frighten Alfred so, and when she saw her poor boy’s look at her, and heard his sob, ‘Oh, Mother!’ it was almost too much for her, and she went up and kissed him, and laid him down less uneasily, but he felt a great tear fall on his face.
‘It’s not true, Mother, I’m sure it is not true,’ cried Ellen; ‘she ought—’
Mrs. King looked at her daughter with a sad sweet face, that stopped her short, and brought the sense over her too. ‘Did he say so, Mother?’ said Alfred.
‘Not to me, dear,’ she answered; ‘but, Ellen, she’s coming back! She’ll be up here if you don’t go down.’
Poor Ellen! what would she not have given for power to listen to her mother, and cry at her ease? But she was forced to hurry, or Betsey would have been half-way up-stairs in another instant. She was a hopeful girl, however, and after that ‘not to me,’ resolved to believe nothing of the matter. Mrs. King knelt down by her son, and looked at him tenderly; and then, as his eyes went on begging for an answer, she said, ‘Dr. Blunt never told me there was no hope, my dear, and everything lies in God’s power.’
‘But you don’t think I shall get well, Mother?’
‘I don’t feel as if you would, my boy,’ she said, very low, and fondling him all the time. ‘You’ve got to cough like Father and Charlie, and—though He might raise my boy up—yet anyhow, Alfy boy, if God sees it good for us, itwillbe good for us, and we shall be helped through with it.’
‘But I’m not good, Mother! What will become of me?’
‘Perhaps the hearing this is all out of God’s mercy, to give you time to get ready, my dear. You are no worse now than you were this morning; you are not like to go yet awhile. No, indeed, my child; so if you don’t put off any longer—’
‘Mother!’ called up Ellen. She was in despair. Betsey was not to be kept by her from satisfying herself upon Alfred’s looks, and Mrs. King was only in time to meet her on the stairs, and tell her that he was so weak and low, that he could not be seen now, she could not tell how it would be when he had had his tea.
Ellen thought she had never had so distressing a tea-drinking in her life, as the being obliged to sit listening civilly to Betsey’s long story about the trouble she had about a stocking of Mrs. Martin’s that was lost in the wash, and that had gone to Miss Rosa Marlowe, because Mrs. Martin had her things marked with a badly-done K. E. M., and all that Mrs. Martin’s Maria and all Miss Marlowe’s Jane had said about it, and all Betsey’s ‘Says I to Mother,’—when she was so longing to be watching poor Alfred, and how her mother could sit so quietly making tea, and answering so civilly, she could not guess; but Mrs. King had that sense of propriety and desire to do as she would be done by, which is the very substance of Christian courtesy, the very want of which made Betsey, with all her wish to be kind, a real oppression and burthen to the whole party.
And where was Harold? Ellen had not seen him coming out of church, but meal-times were pretty certain to bring him home.
‘Oh,’ said Betsey, ‘I’ll warrant he is off to the merry orchard.’
‘I hope not,’ said Mrs. King gravely.
‘He never would,’ said Ellen, in anger.
‘Ah, well, I always said I didn’t see no harm in a lad getting a bit of pleasure.’
‘No, indeed,’ said Mrs. King. ‘Harold knows I would not stint him in the fruit nor in the pleasure, but I should be much vexed if he could go out on a Sunday, buying and selling, among such a lot as meet at that orchard.’
‘Well, I’m sure I don’t know when poor folks is to have a holiday if not on a Sunday, and the poor boy must be terrible moped with his brother so ill.’
‘Not doing thine own pleasure on My holy day,’ thought Ellen, but she did not say it, for her mother could not bear for texts to be quoted at people. But her heart was very heavy; and when she went up with some tea to Alfred, she looked from the window to see whether, as she hoped, Harold might be in Paul’s hay-loft, preferring going without his tea to being teased by Betsey. Paul sat in his loft, with his Bible on his knee, and his head on Cæsar’s neck.
‘Alfred,’ said Ellen, ‘do you know where Harold is? Sure he is not gone to the merry orchard?’
‘Is not he come home?’ said Alfred. ‘Oh, then he is! He is gone to the merry orchard, breaking Sunday with Dick Royston! And by-and-by he’ll be ill, and die, and be as miserable as I am!’ And Alfred cried as Ellen had never seen him cry.
Where was Harold?
Still the evening went on, and he did not come. Alfred had worn himself out with his fit of crying, and lay quite still, either asleep, or looking so like it, that when Betsey had finished her tea, and again began asking to see him, Ellen could honestly declare that he was asleep.
Betsey had bidden them good-bye, more than half affronted at not being able to report to her mother all about his looks, though she carried with her a basket of gooseberries and French beans, and Mrs. King walked all the way down the lane with her, and tried to shew an interest in all she said, to make up for the disappointment.
Maybe likewise Mrs. King felt it a relief to her uneasiness to look up and down the road, and along the river, and into the farm-yard, in the hope that Harold might be in sight; but nothing was to be seen on the road, but Master Norland, his wife, and baby, soberly taking their Sunday walk; nor by the river, except the ducks, who seemed to be enjoying their evening bath, and almost asleep on the water; nor in the yard, except Paul Blackthorn, who had come down from his perch to drive the horses in from the home-field, and shut the stable up for the night.
She could not help stopping a moment at the gate, and calling out to Paul to ask whether he had seen anything of Harold. He seemed to have a great mind not to hear, and turned very slowly with his shoulder towards her, making a sound like ‘Eh?’ as if to ask what she said.
‘Have you seen my boy Harold?’
‘I saw him in the morning.’
‘Have you not seen him since? Didn’t he go to church with you?’
‘No; I don’t go to Sunday school.’
‘Was he there?’
She did not receive any answer.
‘Do you know if many of the boys are gone to the merry orchard?’
‘Ay.’
‘Well, you are a good lad not to be one of them.’
‘Hadn’t got any money,’ said Paul gruffly; but Mrs. King thought he said so chiefly from dislike to be praised, and that there had been some principle as well as poverty to keep him away.
‘It might be better if no one had it on a Sunday,’ she could not help sighing out as she looked anxiously along the lane ere turning in, and then said, ‘My good lad, I don’t want to get you to be telling tales, but it would set my heart at rest, and his poor brother’s up there, if you could tell me he is not gone to Briar Alley.’
Paul turned up his face from the gate upon which he was leaning his elbows, and gazed for a moment at her sad, meek, anxious face, then exclaimed, ‘I can’t think how he could!’
Poor Paul! was it not crossing him how impossible it would seem to do anything to vex one who so cared for him?
‘Then he is gone,’ she said mournfully.
‘They were all at him,’ said Paul; ‘and he said he’d never seen what it was like. Please don’t take on, Missus; he’s right kind and good-hearted, and wanted to treat me.’
‘I had rather he had hearkened to you, my boy,’ said Mrs. King.
‘I don’t know why he should do that,’ said Paul, perhaps meaning that a boy who heeded not such a mother would certainly heed no one else. ‘But please, Missus,’ he added, ‘don’t beat him, for you made me tell on him.’
‘Beat him! no,’ said Mrs. King, with a sad smile; ‘he’s too big a boy for me to manage that way. I can’t do more than grieve if he lets himself be led away.’
‘Then I’d like to beat him myself if he grieves you!’ burst out Paul, doubling up his brown fist with indignation.
‘But you won’t,’ said Mrs. King gently; ‘I don’t want to make a quarrel among you, and I hope you’ll help to keep him out of bad ways, Paul. I look to you for it. Good-night.’
Perhaps the darkness and her own warm feeling made her forget the condition of that hand; at any rate, as she said Good-night she took it in her own and shook it heartily, and then she went in.
Paul did not say Good-night in answer; but when she had turned away, his head went down between his two crossed arms upon the top of the gate, and he did not move for many many minutes, except that his shoulders shook and shook again, for he was sobbing as he had never sobbed since Granny Moll died. If home and home love were not matters of course to you, you might guess what strange new fountains of feeling were stirred in the wild but not untaught boy, by that face, that voice, that touch.
And Mrs. King, as she walked to her own door in the twilight, with bitter pain in her heart, could not help thinking of those from the highways and hedges who flocked to the feast set at naught by such as were bidden.
A sad and mournful Sunday evening was that to the mother and daughter, as each sat over her Bible. Mrs. King would not talk to Ellen, for fear of awakening Alfred; not that low voices would have done so, but Ellen was already much upset by what she had heard and seen, and to talk it over would have brought on a fit of violent crying; so her mother thought it safest to say nothing. They would have read their Bible to one another, but each had her voice so choked with tears, that it would not do.
That Alfred was sinking away into the grave, was no news to Mrs. King; but perhaps it had never been so plainly spoken to her before, and his own knowledge of it seemed to make it more sure; but broken-hearted as she felt, she had been learning to submit to this, and it might be better and safer for him, she thought, to be aware of his state, and more ready to do his best with the time left to him. That was not the freshest sorrow, or more truly a darker cloud had come over, namely, the feeling, so terrible to a good careful mother, that her son is breaking out of the courses to which she has endeavoured and prayed to bring him up—that he is casting off restraint, and running into evil that may be the beginning of ruin, and with no father’s hand to hold him in.
O Harold, had you but seen the thick tears dropping on the walnut table behind the arm that hid her face from Ellen, you would not have thought your fun worth them!
That merry orchard was about three miles from Friarswood. It belonged to a man who kept a small public-house, and had a little farm, and a large garden, with several cherry trees, which in May were perfect gardens of blossoms, white as snow, and in August with small black fruit of the sort known as merries; and unhappily the fertile produce of these trees became a great temptation to the owner and to all the villagers around.
As Sunday was the only day when people could be at leisure, he chose three Sundays when the cherries were ripe for throwing open his orchard to all who chose to come and buy and eat the fruit, and of course cakes and drink of various kinds were also sold. It was a solitary spot, out of the way of the police, or the selling in church-time would have been stopped; but as there may be cases of real distress, the law does not shut up all houses for selling food and drink on a Sunday, so others, where there is no necessity, take advantage of it; and so for miles round all the idle young people and children would call it a holiday to go away from their churches to eat cherries at Briar Alley, buying and selling on a Sunday, noisy and clamorous, and forgetting utterly that it was the Lord’s Day, not their day of idle pleasure.
It was a sad pity that an innocent feast of fruit should be almost out of reach, unless enjoyed in this manner. To be sure, merries might be bought any day of the week at Briar Alley, and were hawked up and down Friarswood so cheaply that any one might get a mouth as purple as the black spaniel’s any day in the season; but that was nothing to the fun of going with numbers, and numbers never could go except on a Sunday. But if people wish to serve God truly, why, they must make up their minds to miss pleasures for His sake, and this was one to begin with; and I am much mistaken if the happiness of the week would not have turned out greater in the end with him. Ay, and as to the owner of the trees, who said he was a poor man, and could not afford to lose the profit, I believe that if he would have trusted God and kept His commandment, his profit in the long run would have been greater here, to say nothing of the peril to his own soul of doing wrong, and leading so many into temptation.
The Kings had been bred up to think a Sunday going to the merry orchard a thing never to be done; and in his most idle days Alfred would never have dreamt of such a thing. Indeed, their good mother always managed to have some treat to make up for it when they were little; and they certainly never wanted for merries, nay, a merry pudding had been their dinner this very day, with savage-looking purple juice and scalding hot stones. If Harold went it was for the frolic, not for want of the dainty; and wrong as it was, his mother was grieving more at the thought of his casting away the restraint of his old habits than for the one action. One son going away into the unseen world, the other being led away from the paths of right—no wonder she wept as she tried to read!
At last voices were coming, and very loud ones. The summer night was so still, they could be heard a great way—those rude coarse voices of village boys boasting and jeering one another.
‘I say, wouldn’t you like to be one of they chaps at Ragglesford School?’
‘What lots they bought there on Saturday, to be sure!’
‘Well they may: they’ve lots of tin!’
‘Have they? How d’ye know?’
‘Why, the money-letters! Don’t I know the feel of them—directed to master this and master that, and with a seal and a card, and half a sovereign, or maybe a whole one, under it; and such lots as they gets before the holidays—that’s to go home, you see.’
‘Well, it’s a shame such little impudent rogues should get so much without ever doing a stroke of work for it.’
‘I say, Harold, don’t ye never put one of they letters in your pocket?’
‘For shame, Dick!’
‘Ha! I shall know where to come when I wants half a sovereign or so!’
‘No, you won’t.’
It was only these last two or three speeches that reached the cottage at all clearly; and they were followed by a sound as if Harold had fallen upon one of the others, and they were holding him off, with halloos and shouts of hoarse laughing, which broke Alfred’s sleep, and his voice came down-stairs with a startled cry of ‘Mother! Mother! what is that?’ She ran up-stairs in haste, and Ellen threw the door open. The sudden display of the light silenced the noisy boys; and Harold came slowly up the garden-path, pretty certain of a scolding, and prepared to feel it as little as he could help.
‘Well, Master, a nice sort of a way of spending a Sunday evening this!’ began Ellen; ‘and coming hollaing up the lane, just on purpose to wake poor Alfred, when he’s so ill!’
‘I’m sure I never meant to wake him.’
‘Then what did you bring all that good-for-nothing set roaring and shouting up the road for? And just this evening, too, when one would have thought you would we have cared for poor Mother and Alfred,’ said she, crying.
‘Why, what’s the matter now?’ said Harold.
‘Oh, they’ve been saying he can’t live out the winter,’ said Ellen, shedding the tears that had been kept back all this time, and broke out now with double force, in her grief for one brother and vexation with the other.
But next winter seemed a great way off to Harold, and he was put out besides, so he did not seem shocked, especially as he was reproached with not feeling what he did not know; so all he did was to say angrily, ‘And how was I to know that?’
‘Of course you don’t know anything, going scampering over the country with the worst lot you can find, away from church and all, not caring for anything! Poor Mother! she never thought one of her lads would come to that!’
‘Plenty does so, without never such a fuss,’ said Harold. ‘Why, what harm is there in eating a few cherries?’
There would be very little pleasure or use in knowing what a wrangling went on all the time Mrs. King was up-stairs putting Alfred to bed. Ellen had all the right on her side, but she did not use it wisely; she was very unhappy, and much displeased with Harold, and so she had it all out in a fretful manner that made him more cross and less feeling than was his nature.
There was something he did feel, however—and that was his mother’s pale, worn, sorrowful face, when she came down-stairs and hushed Ellen, but did not speak to him. They took down the books, read their chapter, and she read prayers very low, and not quite steadily. He would have liked very much to have told her he felt sorry, but he was too proud to do so after having shewn Ellen he was above caring for such nonsense.
So they all went to bed, Harold on a little landing at the top of the stairs; but—whether it was from the pounds of merry-stones he had swallowed, or the talk he had had with his sister—he could not go to sleep, and lay tossing and tumbling about, thinking it very odd he had not heeded more what Ellen had said when he first came in, and the notion dawning on him more and more, that day after day would come and make Alfred worse, and that by the time summer came again he should be alone. Who could have said it? Why had not he asked? What could he have been thinking about? It should not be true! A sort of frenzy to speak to some one, and hear the real meaning of those words, so as to make sure they were only Ellen’s nonsense, came over him in the silent darkness. Presently he heard Alfred moving on his pillow, for the door was open for the heat; and that long long sigh made him call in a whisper, ‘Alf, are you awake?’
In another moment Harold was by his brother’s side. ‘Alf! Alf! are you worse?’ he asked, whispering.
‘No.’
‘Then what’s all this? What did they say? It’s all stuff; I’m sure it is, and you’re getting better. But what did Ellen mean?’
‘No, Harold,’ said Alfred, getting his brother’s hand in his, ‘it’s not stuff; I shan’t get well; I’m going after poor Charlie; and don’t you be a bad lad, Harold, and run away from your church, for you don’t know—how bad it feels to—’ and Alfred turned his face down, for the tears were coming thick.
‘But you aren’t going to die, Alf. Charlie never was like you, I know he wasn’t; he was always coughing. It is all Ellen. Who said it? I won’t let them.’
‘The doctor said it to Betsey Hardman,’ said Alfred; and his cough was only too like his brother’s.
Harold would have said a great deal in contempt of Betsey Hardman, but Alfred did not let him.
‘You’ll wake Mother,’ he said. ‘Hush, Harold, don’t go stamping about; I can’t bear it! No, I don’t want any one to tell me now; I’ve been getting worse ever since I was taken, and—oh! be quiet, Harold.’
‘I can’t be quiet,’ sobbed Harold, coming nearer to him. ‘O Alf! I can’t spare you! There hasn’t been no proper downright fun without you, and—’
Harold had lain down by him and clung to his hand, trying not to sob aloud.
‘O Harold!’ sighed Alfred, ‘I don’t think I should mind—at least not so much—if I hadn’t been such a bad boy.’
‘You, Alfy! Who was ever a good boy if you was not?’
‘Hush! You forget all about when I was up at my Lady’s, and all that. Oh! and how bad I behaved at church, and when I was so saucy to Master about the marbles; and so often I’ve not minded Mother. O Harold! and God judges one for everything!’
What a sad terrified voice it was!
‘Oh! don’t go on so, Alf! I can’t bear it! Why, we are but boys; and those things were so long ago! God will not be hard on little boys. He is merciful, don’t you know?’