CHAPTER II.
“Trials must and will befall,But with humble faith to seeLove inscribed upon them all,This is happiness to me.”
“Trials must and will befall,But with humble faith to seeLove inscribed upon them all,This is happiness to me.”
“Trials must and will befall,
But with humble faith to see
Love inscribed upon them all,
This is happiness to me.”
TOM and Jimmy were quartered with an old colored woman called Aunt Margaret, one of the family servants, who in her old age had been furnished with a tiny brick house near the mansion, in which she had lived some years by herself. The house contained three rooms, two on the lower floor and one above stairs, and the master, who had dismissed the agent upon their arrival, and superintended the settling of the peoplehimself, placed the two boys, Tom and Jimmy, in this upper room. Tom was greatly pleased on account of the quiet which he thought would result from their removal from the cabins or quarters of the rest of the hands, and pictured to himself many happy hours of study in the room up-stairs.
But he discovered his mistake very soon. Aunt Margaret was very fond of company, and the cabin was the common resort of half the working-people on the place, and study, to say nothing of quiet, was out of the question.
It was on the second evening after his arrival, at the close of the first day’s work in the field, that Tom took out his books. How sadly and mournfully he had missed his school all day, no one knew but himself; and now hetook his books and slate with no small degree of pleasure.
“What’s the chile gwine to do?” asked the old woman, peering at him over her spectacles.
“Going to read and study a while by your candle, Aunt Margaret, if I may,” he replied.
“Laws, chile! you may do as you likes, for all me,” she returned with a shake of her head; “but it ’pears like there’ll be mighty little quiet here to-night.”
Tom soon found it so, to his utter dismay. First, Jimmy came in with one or two others, talking loud and making a confusion.
“Are you going to study with me to-night?” asked Tom as he came up to the table and glanced at the books.
“No, I’m notthat,” replied the boy; “it’s larks I’m after, and if you wasn’t a stupid, you wouldn’t either.”
Tom was disappointed, and bent his head over his books silently, and tried to work. But there was no study to be had there. The room gradually filled with women and men, and attention to books was impossible. He gave it up at last, but not before he had two or three laughing remarks addressed to him. He closed his book and rested his head wearily on his hand. He concluded he would go up-stairs. “I am not used to such company as this,” he thought with a new feeling creeping into his heart. “I will go away, and just show them all that I am made of a different sort from them.”
Then he suddenly bethought himhow wrongly he was acting in thus putting himself above his fellows; so he immediately raised his head and joined in the conversation.
It was no pleasure to him, but he stayed half an hour, and then, seeing he could go without giving offence to any one, he gladly gathered up his books and went off up-stairs. A candle was a luxury not to be indulged in, but as Tom ascended the stairs he saw that the moonlight was pouring in through the one window, so that the room was quite light. He put his books away, and seating himself on the floor under the window, which was very low, he leaned his head on his arm upon the sill and began to think.
It was a long, sober thought. With quick understanding he saw very soonwhat a battle the summer would be to him, and how hard it would be for him to accomplish his aims. He was resolved upon one thing: study he must and would, if every leisure minute of the noontide hour was given up to it. Then, again, he must do some work for Jesus. The summer must not yet pass without some deed accomplished whereby his Master should be glorified. He realized that to this end he must make himself familiar with the hands about the place—not only with those who came from Huntsville, but also with the old family servants. The dangers, the temptations accompanying such a course, if they occurred to him at all, did not present themselves in their dangerous form—the temptation that while leading others he might himselfbe led away—that his faith might fail or his courage droop. The whole armor of God was the only thing which could keep him from all the ills and troubles thus presented. He did not know how much trial was before him, but hedidknow that he needed a stronger arm than his own to lead him, and he looked above for strength and shelter.
The trial came first in a most unexpected direction. Jimmy, in all good humor, reported that Tom “had got religion,” and to those to whom he told it it was a very bad recommendation, and they held themselves aloof; and not only that, but they would amuse themselves with sundry jokes at his expense. Tom was astonished and wounded. He could not imagine where they could have heard it, and itprevented, for a time, the advancement he wished to make in their regard. He tried his best. By every effort in his power he endeavored to gain friends among this new company, and in a few instances he succeeded immediately; in others not so well; and often it was impossible to have a talk with those whose friendship he wished most to gain, on account of their leisure-time being so much occupied with dances in the great barn.
The studying was scarcely better at first. It was very hard between his bites of corn-bread in the noon-spell to give his attention to looking out words in the dictionary, or mastering what seemed to him such profound problems in arithmetic. There was an hour before supper which was hisown, and that was devoted, half to study and half to Bible-reading. It was very hard work to stand firmly by his resolution, and go after his books at the close of a warm, tiresome day, and study so persistently just when the twilight was growing beautiful and the people were all resting before their cabin doors. Sometimes he was quite discouraged, and almost determined to give up.
One afternoon, when he had been perhaps two weeks on the plantation, he was coming home from work just at sunset, with his jacket thrown over his arm, warm and tired with his day’s labor, and rather dreading than otherwise the hour of study which was before him, when suddenly, as he passed near the mansion, the master stepped from the doorway and accosted him.Tom stopped and waited for what he might have to say.
“Is your name Tom Alson?” he asked, feeling in his coat pocket and drawing out a number of letters.
“Yes, sir,” he answered, his heart bounding with a hope he hardly dared to own.
“Well, then, I’ve a letter for you,” he said, selecting one from a number. He scanned it curiously for a few minutes, and then gave it to the boy, adding, “Can you read writing?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Tom; “I can read writing, and write myself. I am much obliged to you.”
“Not at all,” answered Mr. Sutherland, carelessly. “Do you know who wrote that direction?”
Tom looked at the letter which hisfingers held so lovingly, and replied with a very bright face,
“Yes, sir—my teacher.”
“Is she white?” inquired the master.
“Oh yes, sir! She is a Northern lady.”
“Well, go off and enjoy your letter,” said Mr. Sutherland, dismissing him, and turning away pleased with the eager look of welcome the boy had given the letter.
And Tom, glad to be so dismissed, ran off to his seat under the trees, leaving his books to take care of themselves while he read the precious letter—the first one he had ever received in his life.
There were two, he found, when he opened the envelope. One with all the dainty prettiness of French paper and stamped “M,” in the delicatehandwriting of Miss Mason, and the other in the round, school-girl hand of Martha. Ah! how every word of those two letters went to Tom’s heart! Martha’s was full of home news, every item well expressed, because her heart was in this the first letter written to her brother Tom. It was penned in good spirits, for her mother had been able to obtain a few days’ work.
“I am looking for a place for myself,” she wrote, “and hope to get one, but I have not seen any opportunity as yet, and sometimes I almost wish I had gone with you.”
“I am glad she didn’t,” thought Tom.
“Our Sunday-school has been so pleasant lately,” she continued, “I only wish you could be here. Mr. Allen gave us some beautiful illuminatedtexts last Sunday. I had been thinking about you all the afternoon, and had been wishing you could have heard Mr. Allen’s talk, and I am afraid I was feeling a little wrong and disappointed that you could not be with us, when Mr. Allen laid upon my desk my little text. I did not wish any more, Tom; I just believed what it said, and kept still. Now I am going to send it to you, and if you have—as I have no doubt you often do, good as you are—any longings for home that grow too strong, then here is my text;” and Tom read in red and gold letters on a bit of card which fell from the letter:
“Trust in the Lord, and wait patiently for him.”
Tom’s eyes were blinded for several minutes, so that he could scarcelysee to read Miss Mason’s kind note. It told him just what he wanted most to know—all the school news; how Martha was getting on, what new songs they were learning, and how his own class was prospering. “And knowing that you had your books with you,” she added, “and thinking you might have time for study, I have marked on a slip of paper all that your class has learned, and a few directions which will help you to study for yourself.
“And now,” she concluded, “I do not know that you need counsel, but let me just remind you that you are a soldier of Jesus Christ, and that it is a part of a soldier’s duty to see that his comrades are saved from danger; so, my dear boy, try and bring back to God some who are still outside thefold. We all have work to do for Jesus, you know.”
Tom’s heart rested. He did not see how he could be sorrowful with these two bits of cheer coming to him when he felt so weary and heartsick. He was not so any more—that night, at any rate—and the letters were shown to many admiring eyes. Jimmy opened his very wide.
“Had a letter from Miss Mason?” exclaimed he. “My sakes! let’s read;” but Tom could not do that.
“I’d rather not, Jimmy,” said he, looking at Jimmy’s fingers and thinking of the delicate paper, “but I’ll tell you all she said.”
He told so much about school and the work she had sent him that Jimmy’s slumbering ambition was aroused.
“I declare, Tom,” said he, “I haven’t studied a bit since I came; have you?”
“Yes,” replied Tom, “a good deal.”
“Are you up with your class?”
“Yes,” returned Tom.
“Oh dear! and I promised to study with you. I’ll begin this very night.”
And he did, and added thereby for a short time much to Tom’s happiness. For a while he gave his evenings pretty steadily, but at noon he was inexorable.
“No, sir,” he said—“noon is for rest.”
The next day Tom was very busy shelling corn for the planting. He had stationed himself on the doorstep of the barn, and as he shelled and the kernels fell from the cob, he thought of his two letters; and suddenly thinking of some task MissMason assigned him, and not being able distinctly to recall it, he took out her letter and laid it open near him, and tried to puzzle out the meaning of an example she had given him, continuing his work while he did so. As he was still thus engaged, the noon-bell struck, and throwing down his ear of corn, he drew a pencil and paper out of his pocket and proceeded carefully to write out the problem. So busy was he that he did not perceive that any one had come up until his master’s voice spoke.
“What are you busy about, Tom?” he asked.
He looked up suddenly, and then rose out of respect to his master. “I was copying out an example my teacher sent me,” he said.
“Is that your writing? Let me seeit.” He reached for the paper on which Tom had been working, and eyed it narrowly.
“Would you like to see my teacher’s letter, sir?” he asked.
“Yes, I should,” he replied; so Tom produced it, and it was read very attentively. “How long did you go to school?” he asked, as he finished it and laid it back into Tom’s hand.
“Two years, sir.”
“And can you do all those examples your teacher has given you?”
“I think so, sir. I am trying them now.”
“Is this the way you always pass your noon-time rest?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Tom.
“The world has turned about,” said the master, with a curious, puzzledlook, and then he turned about himself. But he had not gone three steps before he came back again.
“Say, my boy,” he said, “come up to the house after supper to-night. Tell Aunt Dinah, the cook, that master said you were to come to the library. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Tom; “I will come, sir.”
So the master went away, and Tom returned to his task, so intent and interested that it never entered into his mind to conjecture why he was wanted in the evening at the mansion.