‘But when I knew it was wrong, I did the worst I could!’ said Alfred. ‘Oh, if I could only begin all over again, now I do care! Only, Harold, Harold, you are well; you can be good now when there’s time.’
‘I’ll be ever so good if you’ll only get well,’ said Harold. ‘I wouldn’t have gone to that there place to-night; but ’tis so terribly dull, and one must do something.’
‘But in church-time, and on Sunday!’
‘Well, I’ll never do it again; but it was so sunshiny, and they were all making such fun, you see, and it did seem so stuffy, and so long and tiresome, I couldn’t help it, you see.’
Alfred did not think of asking how, if Harold could not help it this time, he could be sure of never doing so again. He was more inclined to dwell on himself, and went back to that one sentence, ‘God judges us for everything.’ Harold thought he meant it for him, and exclaimed,
‘Yes, yes, I know, but—oh, Alf, you shouldn’t frighten one so; I never meant no harm.’
‘I wasn’t thinking about that,’ sighed Alfred. ‘I was wishing I’d been a better lad; but I’ve been worse, and crosser, and more unkind, ever since I was ill. O Harold! what shall I do?’
‘Don’t go on that way,’ said Harold, crying bitterly. ‘Say your prayers, and maybe you will get well; and then in the morning I’ll ask Mr. Cope to come down, and he’ll tell you not to mind.’
‘I wouldn’t listen to Mr. Cope when he told me to be sorry for my sins; and oh, Harold, if we are not sorry, you know they will not be taken away.’
‘Well, but you are sorry now.’
‘I have heard tell that there are two ways of being sorry, and I don’t know if mine is the right.’
‘I tell you I’ll fetch Mr. Cope in the morning; and when the doctor comes he’ll be sure to say it is all a pack of stuff, and you need not be fretting yourself.’
When Harold awoke in the morning, he found himself lying wrapped in his coverlet on Alfred’s bed, and then he remembered all about it, and looked in haste, as though he expected to see some sudden and terrible change in his brother.
But Alfred was looking cheerful, he had awakened without discomfort; and with some amusement, was watching the starts and movements, the grunts and groans, of Harold’s waking. The morning air and the ordinary look of things, had driven away the gloomy thoughts of evening, and he chiefly thought of them as something strange and dreadful, and yet not quite a dream.
‘Don’t tell Mother,’ whispered Harold, recollecting himself, and starting up quietly.
‘But you’ll fetch Mr. Cope,’ said Alfred earnestly.
Harold had begun not to like the notion of meeting Mr. Cope, lest he should hear something of yesterday’s doings, and he did not like Alfred or himself to think of last night’s alarm, so he said, ‘Oh, very well, I’ll see about it.’
He had not made up his mind. Very likely, if chance had brought him face to face with Mr. Cope, he would have spoken about Alfred as the best way to hinder the Curate from reproving himself; but he had not that right sort of boldness which would have made him go to meet the reproof he so richly deserved, and he was trying to persuade himself either that when Alfred was amused and cheery, he would forget all about ‘that there Betsey’s nonsense,’ or else that Mr. Cope might come that way of himself.
But Alfred was not likely to forget. What he had heard hung on him through all the little occupations of the morning, and made him meek and gentle under them, and he was reckoning constantly upon Mr. Cope’s coming, fastening on the notion as if he were able to save him.
Still the Curate came not, and Alfred became grieved, feeling as if he was neglected.
Mr. Blunt, however, came, and at any rate he would have it out with him; so he asked at once very straightforwardly, ‘Am I going to die, Sir?’
‘Why, what’s put that in your head?’ said the doctor.
‘There was a person here talking last night, Sir,’ said Mrs. King.
‘Well, but am I?’ said Alfred impatiently.
‘Not just yet, I hope,’ said Mr. Blunt cheerfully. ‘You are weak, but you’ll pick up again.’
‘But of this?’ persisted Alfred, who was not to be trifled with.
Mr. Blunt saw he must be in earnest.
‘My boy,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid it is not a thing to be got over. I’ll do the best I can for you, by God’s blessing; and if you get through the winter, and it is a mild spring, you might do; but you’d better settle your mind that you can’t be many years for this world.’
Many years! that sounded like a reprieve, and sent gladness into Ellen’s heart; but somehow it did not seem in the same light to Alfred; he felt that if he were slowly going down hill and wasting away, so as to have no more health or strength in which to live differently from ever before, the length of time was not much to him, and in his sickly impatience he would almost have preferred that it should not be what Betsey kindly called ‘a lingering job.’
There he lay after Mr. Blunt was gone, not giving Ellen any trouble, except by the sad thoughtfulness of his face, as he lay dwelling on all that he wanted to say to Mr. Cope, and the terror of his sin and of judgment sweeping over him every now and then.
Still Mr. Cope came not. Alfred at last began to wonder aloud, and asked if Harold had said anything about it when he came in to dinner; but he heard that Harold had only rushed in for a moment, snatched up a lump of bread and cheese, and made off to the river with some of the lads who meant to spend the noon-tide rest in bathing.
When he came for the evening letters he was caught, and Mr. Cope was asked for; and then it came out that Harold had never given the message at all.
Alfred, greatly hurt, and sadly worn by his day of expectation, had no self-restraint left, and flew out into a regular passion, calling his brother angry names. Harold, just as passionate, went into a rage too, and scolded his brother for his fancies. Mrs. King, in great displeasure, turned him out, and he rushed off to ride like one mad to Elbury; and poor Alfred remained so much shocked at his own outbreak, just when he meant to have been good ever after, and sobbing so miserably, that no one could calm him at all; and Ellen, as the only hope, put on her bonnet to fetch Mr. Cope.
At that moment Paul was come for his bit of bread. She found him looking dismayed at the sounds of violent weeping from above, and he asked what it was.
‘Oh, Alfred is so low and so bad, and he wants Mr. Cope! Here’s your bread, don’t keep me!’
‘Let me go! I’ll be quicker!’ cried Paul; and before she could thank him, he was down the garden and right across the first field.
Alfred had had time to cry himself exhausted, and to be lying very still, almost faint, before Mr. Cope came in in the summer twilight. Good Paul! He had found that Mr. Cope was dining at Ragglesford and had run all the way thither; and here was the kind young Curate, quite breathless with his haste, and never regretting the cheerful party whence he had been called away. All Alfred could say was, ‘O Sir, I shall die; and I’m a bad boy, and wouldn’t heed you when you said so.’
‘And God has made you see your sins, my poor boy,’ said Mr. Cope. ‘That is a great blessing.’
‘But if I can’t do anything to make up for them, what’s the use? And I never shall be well again.’
‘You can’t make up for them; but there is One Who has made up for them, if you will only truly repent.’
‘I wasn’t sorry till I knew I should die,’ said Alfred.
‘No, your sins did not come home to you! Now, do you know what they are?’
‘Oh yes; I’ve been a bad boy to Mother, and at church; and I’ve been cross to Ellen, and quarrelled with Harold; and I was so audacious at my Lady’s, they couldn’t keep me. I never did want really to be good. Oh! I know I shall go to the bad place!’
‘No, Alfred, not if you so repent, that you can hold to our Blessed Saviour’s promise. There is a fountain open for sin and all uncleanness.’
‘It is very good of Him,’ said Alfred, a little more tranquilly, not in the half-sob in which he had before spoken.
‘Most merciful!’ said Mr. Cope.
‘But does it mean me?’ continued Alfred.
‘You were baptized, Alfred, you have a right to all His promises of pardon.’ And he repeated the blessed sentences:
‘Come unto Me, all that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.’
‘God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’
‘But how ought I to believe, Sir?’
‘You say you feel what your sins are; think of them all as you lie, each one as you remember it; say it out in your heart to our Saviour, and pray God to forgive it for His sake, and then think that it cost some of the pain He bore on the Cross, some of the drops of His agony in the Garden. Each sin of ours was indeed of that burden!’
‘Oh, that will make them seem so bad!’
‘Indeed it does; but how it will make you love Him, and feel thankful to Him, and anxious not to waste the sufferings borne for your sake, and glad, perhaps, that you are bearing some small thing yourself. But you are spent, and I had better not talk more now. Let me read you a few prayers to help you, and then I will leave you, and come again to-morrow.’
How differently those Prayers and Psalms sounded to Alfred now that he had really a heart grieved and wearied with the burthen of sin! The point was to make his not a frightened heart, but a contrite heart.
Mrs. King was very anxious about Alfred for many hours after this visit from the Curate, for he was continually crying, not violently, but the tears flowing quietly from his eyes as he lay, thinking. Sometimes it was the badness of the faults as he saw them now, looking so very different from what they did when they were committed in the carelessness of fun and high spirits, or viewed afterwards in the hardening light of self-justification. Now they did look so wantonly hard and rude—unkind to his sister, ruinous to Harold, regardless of his widowed mother, reckless of his God—that each one seemed to cut into him with a sense of its own badness, and he was quite as much grieved as afraid; he hated the fault, and hated himself for it.
Indeed, he was growing less afraid, for the sorrow seemed to swallow that up; the grief at having offended One so loving was putting out the terror of being punished; or rather, when he thought that this illness was punishment, he was almost glad to have some of what he deserved; just as when he was a little boy, he really used to be happier afterwards for having been whipped and put in the corner, because that was like making it up. Though he knew very well that if he had ten thousand times worse than this to bear, it would not be making up for his faults, and he felt now that one of them had been his ‘despising the chastening of the Lord.’ And then the thought of what had made up for it would come: and though he had known of it all his life, and heeded it all too little, now that his heart was tender, and he had felt some of the horror and pain of sin, he took it all home now, and clung to it. He recollected the verses about that One kneeling—nay, falling on the ground, in the cold dewy night, with the chosen friends who could not watch with Him, and the agony and misery that every one in all the world deserved to feel, gathering on Him, Who had done no wrong, and making His brow stream with great drops of Blood.
And the tortures, the shame, the slow Death—circumstance after circumstance came to his mind, and ‘for me,’ ‘this fault of mine helped,’ would rise with it, and the tears trickled down at the thought of the suffering and of the Love that had caused it to be undergone.
Once he raised up his head, and saw through the window the deep dark-blue sky, and the stars, twinkling and sparkling away; that pale band of light, the Milky Way, which they say is made of countless stars too far off to be distinguished, and looking like a cloud, and on it the larger, brighter burnished stars, differing from one another in glory. He thought of some lines in a book Miss Jane once gave Ellen, which said of the stars:
‘The Lord resigned them all to gainThe bliss of pardoning thee.’
‘The Lord resigned them all to gainThe bliss of pardoning thee.’
And when he thought that it was the King of those stars Who was scourged and spit on, and for the sake ofhisfaults, the loving tears came again, and he turned to another hymn of Ellen’s:
‘Rock of Ages, cleft for me,Let me hide myself in Thee!’
‘Rock of Ages, cleft for me,Let me hide myself in Thee!’
And going on with this, he fell into a more quiet sleep than he had had for many nights.
Alfred had worked up his mind to a point where it could not long remain; and when he awoke in the morning, the common affairs of the day occupied him in a way that was not hurtful to him, as the one chief thought was ever present, only laid away for a time, and helping him when he might have been fretful or impatient.
He was anxious for Mr. Cope, and grateful when he saw him coming early in the day. Mr. Cope did not, however, say anything very new. He chiefly wished to shew Alfred that he must not think all his struggle with sin over, and that he had nothing to do but to lie still and be pardoned. There was much more work, as he would find, when the present strong feeling should grow a little blunt; he would have to keep his will bent to bear what was sent by God, and to prove his repentance by curing himself of all his bad habits of peevishness and exacting; to learn, in fact, to take up his cross.
Alfred feebly promised to try, and it did not seem so difficult just then. The days were becoming cooler, and he did not feel quite so ill; and though he did not know how much this helped him, it made it much easier to act on his good resolutions. Miss Selby came to see him, and was quite delighted to see him looking so much less uncomfortable and dismal.
‘Why, Alfred,’ said she, ‘you must be much better.’
Ellen looked mournful at this, and shook her head so that Miss Jane turned her bright face to her in alarm.
‘No, Ma’am,’ said Alfred. ‘Dr. Blunt says I can never get over it.’
‘And does that make you glad?’ almost gasped Miss Jane.
‘No, Ma’am,’ said Alfred; ‘but Mr. Cope has been talking to me, and made it all so—’
He could not get out the words; and, besides, he saw Miss Jane’s eyes winking very fast to check the tears, and Ellen’s had begun to rain down fast.
‘I didn’t mean to be silly,’ said little Jane, in rather a trembling voice; ‘but I’m sorry—no—I’m glad you are happy and good, Alfred.’
‘Not good, Miss Jane,’ cried Alfred; ‘I’m such a bad boy, but there are such good things as I never minded before—’
‘Well then, I think you’ll like what I’ve brought you,’ said Jane eagerly.
It was a little framed picture of our Blessed Lord on His Cross, all darkness round, and the Inscription above His Head; and Miss Jane had painted, in tall Old English red letters, under it the two words, ‘For me.’
Alfred looked at it as if indeed it would be a great comfort to him to be always reminded by the eye, of how ‘He was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities.’
He thanked Miss Jane with all his heart, and she and Ellen soon found a place to hang it up well in his sight. It was a pretty bright sight to see her insisting on holding the nail for it, and then playfully pretending to shrink and fancy that Ellen would hammer her fingers.
Alfred could enjoy the sunshine of his sick-room again; and Ellen and his mother down-stairs told Miss Selby, with many tears, of the happy change that had come over him ever since he had resigned himself to give up hopes of life. Mrs. King looked so peaceful and thankful, that little Jane could hardly understand what it was that made her so much more at rest.
Even Ellen, though her heart ached at the hope having gone out, and left a dark place where it had been, felt the great relief from hour to hour of not being fretted and snarled at for whatever she either did or left undone. Thanks and smiles were much pleasanter payment than groans, murmurs, and scoldings; and the brother and sister sometimes grew quite cheerful and merry together, as Alfred lay raised up to look over the hedge into the harvest-field across the meadow, where the reaper and his wife might be seen gathering the brown ears round, and cutting them with the sickle, and others going after to bind them into the glorious wheat sheaves that leant against each other in heaps of blessed promise of plenty.
Paul tried reaping; but the first thing he did was to make a terrible cut in his hand, which the shuffler told him was for good luck! Some of the women in the field bound it up, but he was good for nothing after it except going after the cattle, and so he was likely to lose all the chance of earning himself any better clothes in harvest-time.
Harold grumbled dreadfully that his mother could not spare him to go harvesting beyond their own tiny quarter of an acre of wheat. The post made it impossible for him to go out to work like the labourers; and besides, his mother did not think he had gained much good in hay-time, and wished to keep him from the boys.
Very hard he thought it; and to hear him grumble, any one would have thought Mrs. King was a tyrant far worse than Farmer Shepherd, working the flesh off his bones, taking away the fun and the payment alike.
The truth was, that the morning when Harold threw away from him the thought of his brother’s danger, and broke all his promises to him in the selfish fear of a rebuke from the clergyman, had been one of the turning-points of his life, and a turning-point for the bad. It had been a hardening of his heart, just as it had begun to be touched, and a letting in of evil spirits instead of good ones.
He became more than ever afraid of Mr. Cope, and shirked going near him so as to be spoken to; he cut Ellen off short if she said a word to him, and avoided being with Alfred, partly because it made him melancholy, partly because he was afraid of Alfred’s again talking to him about the evil of his ways. In reality, his secret soul was wretched at the thought of losing his brother; but he tried to put the notion away from him, and to drown it in the noisiest jokes and most riotous sports he could meet with, keeping company with the wildest lads about the parish. That Dick Royston especially, whose honesty was doubtful, but who, being a clever fellow, was a sort of leader, was doing great harm by setting his face against the new parson, and laughing at the boys who went to him. Mrs. King was very unhappy. It was almost worse to think of Harold than of his sick brother; and Alfred grieved very much too, and took to himself the blame of having made home miserable to Harold, and driven him into bad company; of having been so peevish and unpleasant, that it was no wonder he would not come near him more than could be helped; and above all, of having set a bad example of idleness and recklessness, when he was well. If the tears were brought into his eyes at first by some unkind neglect of Harold’s, they were sure to end in this thought at last; and then the only comfort was, that Mr. Cope had told him that he might make his sick-bed very precious to his brother’s welfare, by praying always for him.
Mr. Cope had talked it over with Mrs. King; and they had agreed that as Harold was under the regular age for Confirmation, and seemed so little disposed to prepare for it in earnest, they would not press it on him. He was far from fit for it, and he was in such a mood of impatient irreverence, that Mr. Cope was afraid of making his sin worse by forcing serious things on him, and his mother was in constant fear of losing her last hold on him.
Yet Harold was not a bad or unfeeling boy by nature; and if he would but have paused to think, he would have been shocked to see how cruelly he was paining his widowed mother and dying brother, just when he should have been their strength and stay.
One afternoon in October, when Alfred was in a good deal of pain, Mr. Blunt said he would send out some cooling ointment for the wound at the joint, when Harold took the evening letters into Elbury. Alfred reckoned much on the relief this was to give, and watched the ticks of the clock for the time for Harold to set off.
‘Make haste,’ were the last words his mother spoke—and Harold fully meant to make haste; nor was it weather to tempt him to stay long, for there was a chill raw fog hanging over the meadows, and fast turning into rain, which hung in drops upon his eyebrows, and the many-tiered cape of his father’s box-coat, which he always wore in bad weather. It was fortunate he was likely to meet nothing, and that he and the pony both knew the road pretty well.
How fuzzy the grey fog made the lamps of the town look! Did they disturb the pony? What a stumble! Ha! there’s a shoe off. Be it known that it was Harold’s own fault; he had not looked at the shoes for many a morning, as he knew it was his duty to do.
He left Peggy with her ears back, much discomposed at being shod in a strange forge, and by any one but Bill Saunders.
Then Harold was going to leave his bag at the post-office, when, as he turned up the street, some one caught hold of him, and cried, ‘Ho! Harold King on foot! What’s the row? Old pony tumbled down dead?’
‘Cast a shoe,’ said Harold.
‘Oh, jolly, you’ll have to wait!’ went on Dick Royston. ‘Come in here! Here’s such a lark!’
Harold looked into a court-yard belonging to a low public-house, and saw what was like a tent, with a bright red star on a blue ground at the end, lighted up. A dark figure came between, and there was a sudden crack that made Harold start.
‘It’s the unique (he called it eu-ni-quee) royal shooting-gallery, patronized by his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales,’ (what a story!) said Dick. ‘You’ve only to lay down your tin; one copper for three shots, and if you hit, you may take your choice—gingerbread-nuts, or bits of cocoa-nut, or, what’s jolliest, lollies with gin inside ’em! Come, blaze away! or ha’n’t you got the money? Does Mother keep you too short?’
If there was a thing Harold had a longing for, it was to fire off a gun! If there was a person he envied more than another, it was old Isaac Coffin, when he prowled up and down Farmer Ledbitter’s fields with an old blunderbuss and some powder, to keep off the birds!
To be sure it was a public-house, but it was not inside one! And Mother would call it gambling. Oh, but it wasn’t cards or skittles! And if he shot away his half-pence, how should he pay for the shoeing of the pony? The blacksmith might trust him, or the clerk at the post-office would lend him the money, or Betsey Hardman. And the time? One shot would not waste much! Pony must be shod. Besides, Dick and all the rest would say he was a baby.
He paid the penny, threw aside his cap, and took the gun, though after all it was only a sham one, and what a miss he made! What business had every one to set up that great hoarse laugh? which made him so angry that he had nearly turned on Dick and cuffed him for his pains.
However, he was the more bent on trying again, and the owner of the gallery shewed him how to manage better. He hit anything but the middle of the star, and just saw how he thought he might hit next time. Next time was barely a miss, so that the man actually gave him a gin-drop to encourage him. That made him mad to meet with real success; but it was the turn of another ‘young gent,’ as the man called him, and Harold had to stand by, with his penny in his hand, burning with impatience, and fancying he could mend each shot of that young gent, and another, and another, and another, who all thrust in to claim their rights before him. His turn came at last; and so short and straight was the gallery, that he really did hit once the side of the star, and once the middle, and thus gained one gingerbread-nut, and three of the gin-drops.
It would have been his nature to share them with Alfred, but he could not do so without saying where he had been, and that he could not do, so he gave one to Dick, and swallowed the rest to keep out the cold.
Just then the town clock struck six, and frightened him. He had been there three-quarters of an hour. What would they say at the post-office?
The clerk looked out of his hole as angry as clerk could look. ‘This won’t do, King,’ he said. ‘Late for sorting! Fine, remember—near an hour after time.’
‘Pony cast a shoe, Sir,’ said Harold. He had never been so near a downright falsehood.
‘Whew! Then I suppose I must not report you this time! But look out! You’re getting slack.’
No time this for borrowing of the clerk. Harold was really frightened, for hehaddawdled much more than he ought of late, and though he sometimes fancied himself sick of the whole post business, a complaint to his mother would be a dreadful matter. It put everything else out of his head; and he ran off in great haste to get the money from Betsey Hardman, knocking loud at her green door.
What a cloud of steamy heat the room was, with the fire glowing like a red furnace, and five black irons standing up before it; and clothes-baskets full of heaps of whiteness, and horses with vapoury webs of lace and cambric hanging on them; and the three ironing-boards, where smoothness ran along with the irons; and the heaps of folded clothes; and Betsey in her white apron, broad and red in the midst of her maidens!
‘Ha! Harold King! Well, to be sure, you are a stranger! Don’t come nigh that there hoss; it’s Mrs. Parnell’s best pocket-handkerchiefs, real Walencines!’ (she meant Valenciennes.) ‘If you’ll just run up and see Mother, I’ll have it out of the way, and we’ll have a cup of tea.’
‘Thank you, but I—’
‘My! What a smoke ye’re in! Take care, or I shall have ’em all to do over again. Go up to Mother, do, like a good lad.’
‘I can’t, Betsey; I must go home.’
‘Ay! that’s the way. Lads never can sit down sensible and comfortable! it’s all the same—’
‘I wanted,’ said Harold, interrupting her, ‘to ask you to lend me sixpence. Pony’s cast a shoe, and I had to leave her with the smith.’
‘Ay? Who did you leave her with?’
‘The first I came to, up in Wood Street.’
‘Myers. Ye shouldn’t have done that. His wife’s the most stuck-up proud body I ever saw—wears steel petticoats, I’ll answer for it. You should have gone to Charles Shaw.’
‘Can’t help it,’ said Harold. ‘Please, Betsey, let me have the sixpence; I’ll pay you faithfully to-morrow!’
‘Ay! that’s always the way. Never come in unless ye want somewhat. ‘Twasn’t the way your poor father went on! He’d a civil word for every one. Well, and can’t you stop a minute to say how your poor brother is?’
‘Much the same,’ said Harold impatiently.
‘Yes, he’ll never be no better, poor thing! All decliny; as I says to Mother, what a misfortune it is upon poor Cousin King! they’ll all go off, one after t’other, just like innocents to the slaughter.’
This was not a cheerful prediction; and Harold petulantly said he must get back, and begged for the sixpence. He got it at last, but not till all Betsey’s pocket had been turned out; and finding nothing but shillings and threepenny-bits, she went all through her day’s expenses aloud, calling all her girls to witness to help her to account for the sixpence that ought to have been there.
Mrs. Brown had paid her four and sixpence—one florin and a half-crown—and she had three threepenny-pieces in her pocket, and twopence. Then Sally had been out and got a shilling’s-worth of soap, and six-penn’orth of blue, and brought home one shilling; and there was the sausages—no one could recollect what they had cost, though they talked so much about their taste; and five-pence-worth of red-herrings, and the butter; yes, and threepence to the beggar who said he had been in Sebastopol. Harold’s head was ready to turn round before it was all done; but he got away at last, with a scolding for not going up to see Mother.
Home he trotted as hard as the pony would go, holding his head down to try to bury nose and mouth in his collar, and the thick rain plastering his hair, and streaming down the back of his neck. What an ill-used wretch was he, said he to himself, to have to rattle all over the country in such weather!
Here was home at last. How comfortable looked the bright light, as the cottage door was thrown open at the sound of the horse’s feet!
‘Well, Harold!’ cried Ellen eagerly, ‘is anything the matter?’
‘No,’ he said, beginning to get sulky because he felt he was wrong; ‘only Peggy lost a shoe—’
‘Lame?’
‘No, I took her to the smith.’
‘Give me Alfred’s ointment, please, before you put her up. He is in such a way about it, and we can’t put him to bed—’
‘Haven’t got it.’
‘Not got it! O Harold!’
‘I should like to know how to be minding such things when pony loses a shoe, and such weather! I declare I’m as wet—!’ said Harold angrily, as he saw his sister clasp her hands in distress, and the tears come in her eyes.
‘Is Harold come safe?’ called Mrs. King from above.
‘Is the ointment come?’ cried Alfred, in a piteous pain-worn voice.
Harold stamped his foot, and bolted to the stable to put the pony away.
‘It’s not come,’ said Ellen, coming up-stairs, very sadly.
‘He has forgot it.’
‘Forgot it!’ cried Alfred, raising himself passionately. ‘He always does forget everything! He don’t care for me one farthing! I believe he wants me dead!’
‘This is very bad of him! I didn’t think he’d have done it,’ said Mrs. King sorrowfully.
‘He’s been loitering after some mischief,’ exclaimed Alfred. ‘Taking his pleasure—and I must stay all this time in pain! Serve him right to send him back to Elbury.’
Mrs. King had a great mind to have done so; but when she looked at the torrents of rain that streamed against the window, and thought how wet Harold must be already, and of the fatal illnesses that had been begun by being exposed to such weather, she was afraid to venture a boy with such a family constitution, and turning back to Alfred, she said, ‘I am very sorry, Alfred, but it can’t be helped; I can’t send Harold out in the rain again, or we shall have him ill too.’
Poor Alfred! it was no trifle to have suffered all day, and to be told the pain must go on all night. His patience and all his better thoughts were quite worn away, and he burst into tears of anger and cried out that it was very hard—his mother cared for Harold more than for him, and nobody minded it, if he lay in such pain all night.
‘You know better than that, dear,’ said his poor mother, sadly grieved, but bearing it meekly. ‘Harold shall go as soon as can be to-morrow.’
‘And what good will that be to-night?’ grumbled Alfred. ‘But you always did put Harold before me. However, I shall soon be dead and out of your way, that’s all!’
Mrs. King would not make any answer to this speech, knowing it only made him worse. She went down to see about Harold, an additional offence to Alfred, who muttered something about ‘Mother and her darling.’
‘How can you, Alfred, speak so to Mother?’ cried Ellen.
‘I’m sure every one is cross enough to me,’ returned Alfred.
‘Not Mother,’ said Ellen. ‘She couldn’t help it.’
‘She won’t send Harold out again, though; I’m sure I’d have gone for him.’
‘You don’t know what the rain was,’ said Ellen.
‘Well, he should have minded; but you’re all against me.’
‘You’ll be sorry by-and-by, Alfred; this isn’t like the way you talk sometimes.’
‘Some one else had need to be sorry, not me.’
Perhaps, in the midst of his captious state, Alfred was somewhat pacified by hearing sounds below that made him certain that Harold was not escaping without some strong words from his mother.
They were not properly taken. Harold was in no mood of repentance, and the consciousness that he had been behaving most unkindly, only made him more rough and self-justifying.
‘I can’t help it! I can’t be a slave to run about everywhere, and remember everything—pony losing her shoe, and nigh tumbling down with me, and Ross at the post so cross for nothing!’
‘You’ll grieve at the way you have used your poor brother one of these days, Harold,’ quietly answered his mother, so low, that Alfred could not hear through the floor. ‘Now, you’ll please to go to bed.’
‘Ain’t I to have no supper?’ said Harold in a sullen voice, with a great mind to sit down in the chimney-corner in defiance.
‘I shall give you something hot when you are in bed. If I treated you as you deserve, I should send you to Mr. Blunt’s this moment; but I can’t afford to have you ill too, so go to bed this moment.’
His mother could still master him by her steadiness and he went up, muttering that he’d no notion of being treated like a baby, and that he would soon shew her the difference: he wasn’t going to be made a slave to Alfred, and ’twas all a fuss about that stuff!
He did fancy he said his prayers; but they could not have been real ones, for he was no softer when his mother came to his bedside with a great basin of hot gruel. He said he hated such nasty sick stuff, and grunted savagely when, with a look that ought to have gone to his heart, she asked if he thought he deserved anything better.
Yet she did not know of the shooting gallery, nor of his false excuses. If he had not been deceiving her, perhaps he might have been touched.
‘Well, Harold,’ she said at last, after taking the empty basin from him, and picking up his wet clothes and boots to dry them by the fire, ‘I hope as you lie there you’ll come to a better mind. It makes me afraid for you, my boy. It is not only your brother you are sinning against, but if you are a bad boy, you know Who will be angry with you. Good-night.’
She lingered, but Harold was still hard, and would neither own himself sorry, nor say good-night.
When she passed his bed at the top of the stairs again, after hanging up the things by the fire, he had his head hidden, and either was, or feigned to be, asleep.
Alfred’s ill-temper was nearly gone, but he still thought himself grievously injured, and was at no pains to keep himself from groaning and moaning all the time he was being put to bed. In fact, he rather liked to make the most of it, to shew his mother how provoking she was, and to reproach Harold for his neglect.
The latter purpose he did not effect; Harold heard every sound, and consoled himself by thinking what an intolerable work Alfred was making on purpose. If he had tried to bear it as well as possible, his brother would have been much more likely to be sorry.
Alfred was thinking too much about his misfortunes and discomforts to attend to the evening reading, but it soothed him a little, and the pain was somewhat less, so he did fall asleep, so uneasily though, that Mrs. King put off going to bed as late as she could.
It was nearly eleven, and Ellen had been in bed a long time, when Alfred started, and Mrs. King turned her head, at the click of the wicket gate, and a step plashing on the walk. She opened the little window, and the gust of wet wind puffed the curtains, whistled round the room, and almost blew out the candle.
‘Who’s there?
‘It’s me, Mrs. King! I’ve got the stuff,’ called a hoarse tired voice.
‘Well, if ever! It’s Paul Blackthorn!’ exclaimed Mrs. King. ‘Thank ye kindly. I’ll come and let you in.’
‘Paul Blackthorn!’ cried Alfred. ‘Been all the way to Elbury for me! O Mother, bring him up, and let me thank him! But how ever did he know?’ The tears came running down Alfred’s cheeks at such kindness from a stranger. Mrs. King had hurried down-stairs, and at the threshold stood a watery figure, holding out the gallipot.
‘Oh! thank you, thank you; but come in! Yes, come in! you must have something hot, and get dried.’
Paul shambled in very foot-sore. He looked as if he were made of moist mud, and might be squeezed into any shape, and streams of rain were dropping from each of his many rags.
‘Well, I don’t know how to thank you—such a night! But he’ll sleep easy now. How did you come to think of it?’
‘I was just coming home from the parson’s, and I met Harold putting up Peggy, in a great way because he’d forgotten. That’s all, Missus,’ said Paul, looking shamefaced. ‘Good-night to you.’
‘No, no, that won’t do. I must have you sit down and get dry,’ said Mrs. King, nursing up the remains of the fire; and as Paul’s day-garments served him for night-gear likewise, he could hardly help accepting the invitation, and spreading his chilled hands to the fire.
As to Mrs. King’s feelings, it must be owned that, grateful as she was, it was rather like sitting opposite to the heap in the middle of Mr. Shepherd’s farm-yard.
‘Would you take that?’ she said, holding out a three-penny piece. ‘I’d make it twice as much if I could, but times are hard.’
‘No, no, Missus, I didn’t do it for that,’ said Paul, putting it aside.
‘Then you must have some supper, that I declare.’
And she brought out a slice of cold bacon, and some bread, and warmed some beer at the fire. She would go without bacon and beer herself to-morrow, but that was nothing to her. It was a real pleasure to see the colour come into Paul’s bony yellow cheeks at the hearty meal, which he could not refuse; but he did not speak much, for he was tired out, and the fire and the beer were making him very sleepy.
Alfred rapped above with the stick that served as a bell. It was to beg that Paul would come and be thanked; and though Mrs. King was a little afraid of the experiment, she did ask him to walk up for a moment.
Grunt went he, and in rather an unmannerly way, he said, ‘I’d rather not.’
‘Pray do,’ said Mrs. King; ‘I don’t think Alfred will sleep easy without saying thank you.’
So Paul complied, and in a most ungainly fashion clumped up-stairs and stood at the door. He had not forgotten his last reception, and would not come a step farther, though Alfred stretched out his hand and begged him to come in.
Alfred could say only ‘Thank you, I never thought any one would be so kind.’
And Paul made gruff reply, ‘Ye’re very welcome,’ turned about as if he were running away, and tumbled down-stairs, and out of the house, without even answering Mrs. King’s ‘Good-night.’
Harold had wakened at the sounds. He heard all, but he chose to seem to be asleep, and, would you believe it? he was only the more provoked! Paul’s exertion made his neglect seem all the worse, and he was positively angry with him for ‘going and meddling, and poking his nose where he’d no concern. Now he shouldn’t be able to get the stuff to-morrow, and so make it up; and of course mother would go and dock Paul’s supper out of his dinner!’
If such reflections were going on upon one side of the partition, there were very different thoughts upon the other. The stranger’s kindness had done more than relieve Alfred’s pain: the warm sense of thankfulness had softened his spirit, and carried off his selfish fit. He knew not how kind people were to him, and how ungrateful he had been to punish his innocent mother and sister, and so much to magnify a bit of thoughtlessness on Harold’s part; to be angry with his mother for not driving him out when she thought it might endanger his health and life, and to say such cruel things on purpose to wound her. Alfred felt himself far more cruel than he had even thought Harold.
And was this his resolution? Was this the shewing the sincerity of his repentance through his conduct in illness? Was this patience? Was it brotherly love? Was it the taking up the cross so as to bear it like his Saviour, Who spoke no word of complaining, no murmur against His tormentors?
How he had fallen! How he had lost himself! It was a bitter distress, and threw him almost into despair. He prayed over and over to be forgiven, and began to long for some assurance of pardon, and for something to prevent all his right feelings and wishes from thus seeming to slip away from his grasp at the first trial.
He told his mother how sorry he was; and she answered, ‘Dear lad, don’t fret about it. It was very hard for you to bear, and you are but learning, you see, to be patient.’
‘But I’m not learning if I don’t go on no better,’ sighed Alfred.
‘By bits you are, my boy,’ she said; ‘you are much less fractious now than you used to be, only you could not stand this out-of-the-way trial.’
Alfred groaned.
‘Do you remember what our Saviour said to St. Peter?’ said his mother; ‘“Whither I go thou canst not follow Me now, but thou shalt follow Me afterwards.” You see, St. Peter couldn’t bear his cross then, but he went on doing his best, and grieving when he failed, and by-and-by he did bear it almost like his Master. He got to be made strong out of weakness.’
There was some comfort to Alfred in this; but he feared, and yet longed, to see Mr. Cope, and when he came, had scarcely answered his questions as to how he felt, before he said, ‘O Sir, I’ve been a bad boy again, and so cross to them all!’
‘O Sir,’ said Ellen, who could not bear for him to blame himself, ‘I’m sure it was no wonder—he’s so distracted with the pain, and Harold getting idling, and forgetting to bring him the ointment. Why, even that vagabond boy was so shocked, that he went all the way to Elbury that very night for it. I told Alfred you’d tell him that anybody would be put out, and nobody would think of minding what he said.’
‘Nobody, especially so kind a sister,’ said Mr. Cope, smiling; ‘but that is not what Alfred is thinking of.’
‘No, Sir,’ said Alfred; ‘their being so good to me makes it all the worse.’
‘I quite believe so; and you are very much disappointed in yourself.’
‘Oh yes, Sir, just when I wanted to be getting patient, and more like—’ and his eyes turned to the little picture, and filled with tears.
Mr. Cope said somewhat of what his mother had said that he was but a scholar in patience, and that he must take courage, though he had slipped, and pray for new strengthening and refreshing to go on in the path of pain his Lord had hallowed for him.
Perhaps the words reminded Alfred of the part of the Catechism where they occur, for he said, ‘Oh, I wish I was confirmed! If I could but take the Holy Sacrament, to make me stronger, and sure of being forgiven—’
‘You shall—before—’ said Mr. Cope, speaking eagerly, but becoming choked as he went on. ‘You are one whom the Church would own as ready and desirous to come, though you cannot be confirmed. You should at once—but you see I am not yet a priest; I have not the power to administer the Holy Communion; but I trust I shall be one in the spring, and then, Alfred—Or if you should be worse, I promise you that I would bring some one here. You shall not go without the Bread of Life.’
Alfred felt what he said to the depths of his heart, but he could not say anything but ‘Thank you, Sir.’
Mr. Cope, still much moved, laid his hand upon that of the boy. ‘So, Alfred, we prepare together. As I hope and long to prepare myself to have that great charge committed to me, which our Saviour Christ gave to His Apostles; so you prepare for the receiving of that Bread and that Cup which will more fully unite you to Him, and join your suffering to what He bore for you.’
‘How shall I, Sir?’ murmured Alfred.
‘I will do my best to shew you,’ said Mr. Cope; ‘but your Catechism tells you best. Think over that last answer.’
Alfred’s face lighted sweetly as he went over it. ‘Why, that’s what I can’t help doing, Sir; I can’t forget my faults, I’m so afraid of them; and I’m sure I do want to lead a new life, if I didn’t keep on being so bad; and thinking about His dying is the best comfort I have. Nor I’m sure I don’t bear ill-will to nobody, only I suppose it is not charity to run out at poor Mother and Ellen when one’s put out.’
‘Perhaps that is what you want to learn,’ said Mr. Cope, ‘and to get all these feelings deepened, and more earnest and steadfast. If the long waiting does that for you, it will be good, and keep you from coming lightly to the Holy Feast.’
‘Oh, I could not do that!’ exclaimed Alfred. ‘And may I think that all my faults will be taken away and forgiven?’
‘All you repent of, and bring in faith—’
‘That is what they say at church in the Absolution,’ said Alfred thoughtfully.
‘Rather it is what the priest says to them,’ said Mr. Cope; ‘it is the applying the promise of forgiveness that our Saviour bought. I may not yet say those words with authority, Alfred, but I should like to hope that some day I may speak them to you, and bring rest from the weight at your heart.’
‘Oh! I hope I may live to that!’ said Alfred.
‘You shall hear them, whether from me or from another,’ said Mr. Cope, ‘that is, if God will grant us warning. But you need not fear, Alfred, if you thoroughly repent, and put your full faith in the great Sacrifice that has been offered for your sins and the sins of all the world. God will take care of His child, and you already have His promise that He will give you all that is needful for your salvation.’
If Harold had known all the consequences of his neglect, perhaps he would have been more sorry for it than as yet he had chosen to be.
The long walk and the warm beer and fire sent Paul to his hay-nest so heavy with sleep, that he never stirred till next morning he was wakened by Tom Boldre, the shuffler, kicking him severely, and swearing at him for a lazy fellow, who stayed out at night and left him to do his work.
Paul stumbled to his feet, quite confused by the pain, and feeling for his shoes in the dark loft. The shuffler scarcely gave him an instant to put them on, but hunted him down-stairs, telling him the farmer was there, and he would catch it.
It would do nobody any good to hear the violent way in which Mr. Shepherd abused the boy. He was a passionate man, and no good labourers liked to work with him because of his tongue. With such grown men as he had, he was obliged to keep himself under some restraint, but this only incited him to make up for it towards the poor friendless boy.
It was really nearly eight o’clock, and Paul’s work had been neglected, which was enough to cause displeasure; and besides, Boldre had heard Paul coming home past eleven, and the farmer insisted on knowing what he had been doing.
Under all his rags, Paul was a very proud boy, and thus asked, he would not tell, but stood with his legs twisted, looking very sulky.
‘No use asking him,’ cried Mrs. Shepherd’s shrill voice at the back door; ‘why, don’t ye hear that Mrs. Barker’s hen-roost has been robbed by Dick Royston and two or three more on ’em?’
‘I never robbed!’ cried Paul indignantly.
‘None of your jaw,’ said the farmer angrily. ‘If you don’t tell me this moment where you’ve been, off you go this instant. Drinking at the Tankard, I’ll warrant.’
‘No such thing, Sir,’ said Paul. ‘I went to Elbury after some medicine for a sick person.’
Somehow he had a feeling about the house opposite, which would not let him come out with the name in such a scene.
‘That’s all stuff,’ broke in Mrs. Shepherd, ‘I don’t believe one word of it! Send him off; take my advice, Farmer, let him go where he comes from; Ellen King told me he was out of prison.’
Paul flushed crimson at this, and shook all over. He had all but turned to go, caring for nothing more at Friarswood; but just then, John Farden, one of the labourers, who was carrying out some manure, called out, ‘No, no, Ma’am. Sure enough he did go to Elbury to Dr. Blunt’s. I was on the road myself, and I hears him. “Good-night,” says I. “Good-night,” says he. “Where be’est going?” says I. “To doctor’s,” says he, “arter some stuff for Alfred King.”
‘Yes,’ said Paul, speaking more to Farden than to his master, ‘and then Mrs. King gave me some supper, and that was what made me so late.’
‘She ought to be ashamed of herself, then,’ said Mrs. Shepherd spitefully, ‘having a vagabond scamp like that drinking beer at her house at that time of night. How one is deceived in folks!’
‘Well, what are you doing here?’ cried the farmer, turning on Paul angrily; ‘d’ye mean to waste any more of the day?’
So Paul was not turned off, and had to go straight to his work. It was well he had had so good a supper, for he had not a moment to snatch a bit of breakfast. It so happened that his work was to go with John Farden, who was carrying out the manure in the cart. Paul had to hold the horse, while John forked it out into little heaps in the field. John was a great big powerful man, with a foolish face, not a good workman, nor a good character, or he would not have been at that farm. He had either never been taught anything, or had forgotten it all; he never went near church; he had married a disreputable wife, and had two or three unruly children, who were likely to be the plagues of their parents and the parish, but not a whit did John heed; he did not seem to have much more sense than to work just enough to get food, lodging, beer, and tobacco, to sleep all night, and doze all Sunday. There was not any malice nor dishonesty in him; but it was terrible that a man with an immortal soul should live so nearly the life of the brute beasts that have no understanding, and should never wake to the sense of God or of eternity.
He was not a man of many words, and nothing passed for a long time but shouts of hoy, and whoa, and the like, to the horse. Paul went heavily on, scarce knowing what he was about; there was a stunned jaded feel about him, as if he were hunted and driven about, a mere outcast, despised by every one, even by the Kings, whose kindness had been his only ray of brightness. Not that his senses or spirits were alive enough even to be conscious of pain or vexation; it was only a dull dreary heedlessness what became of him next; and, quick clever boy as he had been in the Union, he did not seem to have a bit more sense, thought, or feeling, than John Farden.
John Farden was the first to break the silence: ‘I wouldn’t bide,’ said he.
Paul looked up, and muttered, ‘I have nowhere to go.’
‘Farmer uses thee shameful,’ repeated John. ‘Why don’t thee cut?’
Paul saw the smoke of Mrs. King’s chimney. That had always seemed like a friend to him, but it came across him that they too thought him a runaway from prison, and he felt as if his only bond of fellowship was gone. But there was something else, too; and he made answer, ‘I’ll bide for the Confirmation.’
‘Eh?’ said John, ‘what good’ll that do ye?’
‘Help me to be a good lad,’ said Paul, who knew John Farden would not enter into any other explanation.
‘Why, what’ll they do to ye?’
‘The Bishop will put his hand on me and bless me,’ said Paul; and as he said the words there was hope and refreshment coming back. He was a child of God, if no other owned him.
‘Whoy,’ said Farden, much as he might have spoken to his horse, ‘rum sort of a head thou’st got! Thee’ll never go up to Bishop such a guy!’
‘Can’t help it,’ said Paul rather sullenly; ‘it ain’t the clothes that God looks at.’
John scanned him all over, with his face looking more foolish than ever in the puzzle he felt.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘and what wilt get by it?’
‘God’s grace to do right, I hope,’ said Paul; then he added, out of his sad heart, ‘It’s bad enough here, to be sure. It would be a bad look-out if one hoped for nothing afterwards.’
Somehow John’s mind didn’t take in the notion of afterwards, and he did not go on talking to Paul. Perhaps there was a dread in his poor dull mind of getting frightened out of the deadly stupefied sleep it was bound in.
But that bit of talk had done Paul great good, by rousing him to the thought of what he had to hope for. There was the Confirmation nigh at hand, and then on beyond there was rest; and the words came into his mind, ‘There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest.’
Poor, poor boy! He was very young to have such yearnings towards the grave, and well-nigh to wish he lay as near to it as Alfred King, so he might have those loving tender hands near him, those kind voices round him. Paul had gone through a great deal in these few months; and, used to good shelter and regular meals, he was less inured to bodily hardship than many a cottage boy. His utter neglect of his person was telling on him; he was less healthy and strong than he had been, and though high spirits, merriment, and the pleasure of freedom and independence, had made all light to him in the summer, yet now the cold weather, with his insufficient food and scanty clothing, was dulling him and deadening him, and hard work and unkind usage seemed to be grinding his very senses down. To be sure, when twelve o’clock came, he went up into the loft, ate his bit of dry bread, and said his prayers, as he had not been able to do in the morning, and that made him feel less forlorn and downcast for a little while; but then as he sat, he grew cold, and numb, and sleepy, and seemed to have no life in him, but to be moving like a horse in a mill, when Boldre called him down, and told him not to be idling there.
The theft in Mrs. Barker’s poultry-yard was never traced home to any one, but the world did not the less believe Dick Royston and Jesse Rolt to have been concerned in it. Indeed, they had been drinking up some of their gains when Harold met them at the shooting-gallery: and Mrs. Shepherd would not put it out of her head that Paul Blackthorn was in the secret, and that if he did really go for the medicine as he said, it was only as an excuse for carrying the chickens to some receiver of stolen goods. She had no notion of any person doing anything out of pure love and pity. Moreover, it is much easier to put a suspicion into people’s heads than out again; and if Paul’s whole history and each day’s doings had been proved to her in a court of justice, she would still have chiefly remembered that she had always thought ill of him, and that Ellen King had said he was a runaway convict, and so she would have believed him to the end.
Ellen had long ago forgotten that she had said anything of the kind; and though she still held her nose rather high when Paul was near, she would have answered for his honesty as readily as for that of her own brothers. But hers had not been the charity that thinketh no evil, and her idle words had been like thistle-down, lightly sent forth, but when they had lighted, bearing thorns and prickles.
Those thorns were galling poor Paul. Nobody could guess what his glimpses of that happy, peaceful, loving family were to him. They seemed to him like a softer, better kind of world, and he looked at their fair faces and fresh, well-ordered garments with a sort of reverence; a kind look or greeting from Mrs. King, a mere civil answer from Ellen, those two sights of the white spirit-looking Alfred, were like the rays of light that shone into his dark hay-loft. Sometimes he heard them singing their hymns and psalms on a Sunday evening, and then the tears would come into his eyes as he leant over the gate to listen. And, as if it was because Ellen kept at the greatest distance from him, he set more store by her words and looks than those of any one else, was always glad when she served him in the shop, and used to watch her on Sunday, looking as fresh as a flower in her neat plain dress.
And now to hear that she not only thought meanly of him, which he knew well enough, but thought him a thief, a runaway, and an impostor coming about with false tales, was like a weight upon his sunken spirits, and seemed to take away all the little heart hard usage had left him, made him feel as if suspicious eyes were on him whenever he went for his bit of bread, and took away all his peace in looking at the cottage.
He did once take courage to say to Harold, ‘Did your sister really say I had run away from gaol?’
‘Oh, nobody minds what our Ellen says,’ was the answer.
‘But did she say so?’
‘I don’t know, I dare say she did. She’s so fine, that she thinks no one that comes up-stairs in dirty shoes worth speaking to. I’m sure she’s the plague of my life—always at me.’
That was not much comfort for Paul. He had other friends, to be sure. All the boys in the place liked him, and were very angry with the way the farmer treated him, and greatly to their credit, they admired his superior learning instead of being jealous of it. Mrs. Hayward, the sexton’s wife, the same who had bound up his hand when he cut it at harvest, even asked him to come in and help her boys in the evenings with what they had to prepare for Mr. Cope. He was not sorry to do so sometimes. The cottage was a slatternly sort of place, where he did not feel ashamed of himself, and the Haywards were mild good sort of folks, from whom he was sure never to hear either a bad or an unkind word; though he did not care for them, nor feel refreshed and helped by being with them as he did with the Kings.
John Farden, too, was good-natured to him, and once or twice hindered Boldre from striking or abusing him; he offered him a pipe once, but Paul could not smoke, and another time brought him out a pint of beer into the field. Mrs. Shepherd spied him drinking it from her upper window, and believed all the more that he got money somehow, and spent it in drink.
So the time wore on till the Confirmation, all seeming like one dull heavy dream of bondage; and as the weather became colder, the poor boy seemed to have no power of thinking of anything, but of so getting through his work as to avoid violence, to keep himself from perishing with cold, and not to hurt his chilblains more than he could help.
All his quick intellect and good instruction seemed to have perished away, and the last time he went to Mr. Cope’s, he sat as if he were stupid or asleep, and when a question came to him, sat with his mouth open like silly Bill Pridden.
Mr. Cope knew him too well not to feel, as he wrote the ticket, that there were very few of whom he could so entirely from his heart say ‘Examined and APPROVED,’ as the poor lonely outcast foundling, Paul Blackthorn, who could not even tell whether he were fifteen, sixteen, or seventeen, but could just make sure that he had once been caned by old Mr. Haynes, who went away from the Union twelve years ago.
‘Do you think you can keep the ticket safe if I give it you now, Paul?’ asked Mr. Cope, recollecting that the cows might sup upon it like his Prayer-book.
Paul put his hands down to the bottom of his pockets. They were all one hole, and that sad lost foolish look came over his wan face again, and startled Mr. Cope.
The boys grinned, but Charles Hayward stepped forward. ‘Please, Sir, let me take care of it for him.’
Mr. Cope and Paul both agreed, and Mr. Cope kept Charles for a moment to say, as he gave him a shilling, ‘Look here, Charles, do you think you can manage to get that poor fellow a tolerable breakfast on Saturday before he goes? And if you could make him look a little more decent?’
Charles pulled his forelock and looked knowing. In fact, there was a little plot among these good-natured boys, and Harold King was in it too, though he was not of the Confirmation party, and said and thought he was very glad of it. He did not want to bind himself to be so very good. Silly boy; as if Baptism had not bound him already!
Mrs. Hayward put her head out as Paul passed her cottage, and called out, ‘I say, you Paul, you come in to-morrow evening with our Charlie and Jim, and I’ll wash you when I washes them.’
Good Mrs. Hayward made a mistake that the more delicate-minded Mrs. King would never have made. Perhaps if a pail of warm water and some soap had been set before Paul, he might actually have washed himself; but he was much too big and too shamefaced a lad to fancy sharing a family scrubbing by a woman, whatever she might do to her own sons. But considering the size of the Hayward cottage, and the way in which the family lived, this sort of notion was not likely to come into the head of the good-natured mother.
So she and her boys were much vexed when Paul did not make his appearance, and she made a face of great disgust when Charles said, ‘Never mind, Mother, my white frock will hide no end of dirt.’
‘I shall have to wash it over again before you can wear it, I know,’ said Mrs. Hayward. ‘Not as I grudges the trouble; he’s a poor lost orphant, that it’s a shame to see so treated.’
Mrs. Hayward did not know that she was bestowing the cup of cold water, as well as being literally ready to wash the feet of the poor disciple.
A clean body is a type and token of a pure mind; and though the lads of Friarswood did not quite perceive this, there was a feeling about them of there being something unnatural and improper, and a disgrace to Friarswood, in any one going up to the Bishop in such a condition as Paul. Especially, as Charles Hayward said, when he was the pick of the whole lot. Perhaps Charles was right, for surely Paul was single-hearted in his hope of walking straight to his one home, Heaven, and he had been doing no other than bearing his cross, when he so patiently took the being ‘buffeted’ when he did well, and faithfully served his froward master.
But Paul was not to escape the outward cleansing, and from one of the very last people from whom it would have been expected. He had just pulled his bed of hay down over him, and was trying to curl himself up so as to stop his teeth from chattering, with Cæsar on his feet, when the dog growled, and a great voice lowered to a gruff whisper, said, ‘Come along, young un!’
‘I’m coming,’ cried Paul.
Though it was not Boldre’s voice, it had startled him terribly; he was so much used to ill-treatment, that he expected a savage blow every moment.
But the great hand that closed on him, though rough, was not unkind.
‘Poor lad, how he quakes!’ said John Farden’s voice. ‘Don’t ye be afeard, it’s only me.’
‘Nobody got at the horses?’ cried Paul.
‘No, no; only I ain’t going to have you going up to yon big parson all one muck-heap! Come on, and make no noise about it.’
Paul did not very well know what was going to befall him, but he did not feel unsafe with John Farden, and besides, his lank frame was in the grasp of that big hand like a mouse in the power of a mastiff. So he let himself be hauled down the ladder, into an empty stall, where, behold, there was a dark lantern (which had been at bad work in its time), a pail, a brush, a bit of soap, and a ragged towel.
John laid hold of him much as Alfred in his page days used to do of Lady Jane’s little dog when it had to be washed, but Puck had the advantage in keeping on his shaggy coat all the time, and in being more gently handled, whereas Farden scrubbed with such hearty good-will, that Paul thought his very skin would come off. But he had undergone the like in the workhouse, and he knew how to accommodate himself to it; and when his rough bath was over, though he was very sore, and stiff, and chilly, he really felt relieved, and more respectable than he had done for many months, only rather sorry he must put on his filthy old rags again; and he gave honest John more thanks than might have been expected.
The Confirmation was to be at eleven o’clock, at Elbury, and John had undertaken his morning’s work, so that Mr. Shepherd grudgingly consented to spare him, knowing that all the other farmers of course did the same, and that there would be a cry of shame if he did not.
Paul had just found his way down the ladder in the morning, with thoughts going through his mind that to him this would be the coming of the Comforter, and he was sure he wanted comfort; and that for some hours of this day at least, he should be at peace from rude words and blows, when he heard a great confusion of merry voices and suppressed laughing, and saw the heads of some of the lads bobbing about near Mrs. King’s garden.
Was it time already to set off, he wondered, looking up to the sun; but then those boys seemed to be in an uproarious state such as did not suit his present mood, nor did he think Mr. Cope would consider it befitting. He would have let them go by, feeling himself such a scare-crow as they might think a blot upon them; but he remembered that Charles Hayward had his ticket, and as he looked at himself, he doubted whether he should be let into a strange church.
‘Paul! Paul Blackthorn!’ called Harold, with a voice all aglee.
‘Well!’ said Paul, ‘what do you want of me?’
‘Come on, and you’ll see.’
‘I don’t want a row. Is Charlie Hayward there? Just ask him for my card, and don’t make a work.’
‘He’ll give it you if you’ll come for it,’ said Harold; and seeing there was no other chance, Paul slowly came. Harold led him to the stable, where just within the door stood a knot of stout hearty boys, snorting with fun, hiding their heads on each other’s shoulders, and bending their buskined knees with merriment.
‘Now then!’ cried Charles Hayward, and he had got hold of the only button that held Paul’s coat together.
Paul was bursting out with something, but George Grant’s arms were round his waist, and his hands were fumbling at his fastenings. They were each one much stronger than he was now, and they drowned his voice with shouts of laughter, while as fast as one garment was pulled off, another was put on.
‘Mind, you needn’t make such a work, it bain’t presents,’ said George Grant, ‘only we won’t have them asking up at Elbury if we’ve saved the guy to bring in.’
‘It is a present, though, old Betty Bushel’s shirt,’ said Charles Hayward. ‘She said she’d throw it at his head if he brought it back again; but the frock’s mine.’
‘And the corduroys is mine,’ said George Grant. ‘My! they be a sight too big in the band! Run in, Harold, and see if your mother can lend us a pin.’
‘And the waistcoat is my summer one,’ said Fred Bunting. ‘He’s too big too; why, Paul, you’re no better than a natomy!’
‘Never mind, my white frock will hide it all,’ said Charles, ‘and here’s Ned’s cap for you. Oh! and it’s poor Alfred’s boots.’
Paul could not make up his mind to walk all the way in the boots, but to satisfy the boys he engaged to put them on as soon as they were getting to Elbury.
‘My! he looks quite respectable,’ cried Charles, running back a little way to look at him.
‘I wonder if Mr. Cope will know him?’ exclaimed Harold, jumping leap-frog fashion on George Grant’s back.
‘The maids will take him for some strange gentleman,’ exclaimed Jem Hayward; ‘and why, bless me, he’s washed, I do declare!’ as a streak of light from the door fell on Paul’s visage.