Friarswood Post Office

‘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.