Friarswood Post Office

C >> Charlotte M. Yonge >> Friarswood Post Office

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'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
Caesar was to be got down; for, as every one knows, a dog can mount a
ladder far better than he can descend; and poor Caesar 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.

CHAPTER V--AN UNWELCOME VISITOR

'The axe is laid to the root of the tree,' was said by the Great
Messenger, when the new and better Covenant was coming to pierce,
try, and search into, the hearts of men.

Something like this always happens, in some measure, whenever closer,
clearer, and more stringent views of faith and of practice are
brought home to Christians. They do not always take well the finding
that more is required of them than they have hitherto fancied
needful; and there are many who wince and murmur at the sharp
piercing of the weapon which tries their very hearts; they try to
escape from it, and to forget the disease that it has touched, and at
first, often grow worse rather than better. Well is it for them if
they return while yet there is time, before blindness have come over
their eyes, and hardness over their heart.

Perhaps this was the true history of much that grieved poor Mrs.
King, and distressed Ellen, during the remainder of the summer.
Anxious as Mrs. King had been to bring her sons up in the right way,
there was something in Mr. Cope's manner of talking to them that
brought things closer home to them, partly from their being put in a
new light, and partly from his being a man, and speaking with a
different kind of authority.

Alfred did not like his last conversation--it was little more than
his mother and Miss Selby had said--but then he had managed to throw
it off, and he wanted to do so again. It was pleasanter to him to
think himself hardly treated, than to look right in the face at all
his faults; he knew it was of no use to say he had none, so he lumped
them all up by calling himself a sinful creature, like every one
else; and thus never felt the weight of them at all, because he never
thought what they were.

And yet, because Mr. Cope's words had made him uneasy, he could not
rest in this state; he was out of temper whenever the Curate's name
was spoken, and accused Ellen of bothering about him as much as
Harold did about Paul Blackthorn; and if he came to see him, he made
himself sullen, and would not talk, sometimes seeming oppressed and
tired, and unable to bear any one's presence, sometimes leaving Ellen
to do all the answering, dreading nothing so much as being left alone
with the clergyman. Mr. Cope had offered to read prayers with him,
and he could not refuse; but he was more apt to be thinking that it
was tiresome, than trying to enter into what, poor foolish boy, would
have been his best comfort.

To say he was cross when Mr. Cope was there, would be saying much too
little; there was scarcely any time when he was not cross; he was
hardly civil even to Miss Jane, so that she began to think it was
unpleasant to him to have her there; and if she were a week without
calling, he grumbled hard thoughts about fine people; he was fretful
and impatient with the doctor; and as to those of whom he had no
fears, he would have been quite intolerable, had they loved him less,
or had less pity on his suffering.

He never was pleased with anything; teased his mother half the night,
and drove Ellen about all day. She, good girl, never said one word
of impatience, but bore it all with the sweetest good humour; but her
mother now and then spoke severely for Alfred's own good, and then he
made himself more miserable than ever, and thought she was unkind and
harsh, and that he was very much to be pitied for having a mother who
could not bear with her poor sick boy. He was treating his mother as
he was treating his Father in Heaven.

How Harold fared with him may easily be guessed--how the poor boy
could hardly speak or step without being moaned at, till he was
almost turned out of his own house; and his mother did not know what
to do, for Alfred was really very ill, and fretting made him worse,
and nothing could be so bad for his brother as being driven out from
home, to spend the long summer evenings as he could.

Ellen would have been thankful now, had Paul Blackthorn been the
worst company into which Harold fell. Not that Paul was a bit
cleaner; on the contrary, each day could not fail to make him worse,
till, as Ellen had once said, you might almost grow a crop of
radishes upon his shoulders.

Mrs. King's kind offer of washing his shirt had come to nothing. She
asked Harold about it, and had for answer, 'Do you think he would,
after the way you served him?'

Either he was affronted, or he was ashamed of her seeing his rags,
or, what was not quite impossible, there was no shirt at all in the
case; and he had a sturdy sort of independence about him, that made
him always turn surly at any notion of anything being done for him
for charity.

How or why he stayed on with the farmer was hard to guess, for he had
very scanty pay, and rough usage; the farmer did not like him; the
farmer's wife scolded him constantly, and laid on his shoulders all
the mischief that was done about the place; and the shuffler gave him
half his own work to do, and hunted him about from dawn till past
sunset. He was always going at the end of every week, but never
gone; perhaps he had undergone too much in his wanderings, to be
ready to begin them again; or perhaps either Caesar or Harold, one or
both, kept him at Friarswood. And there might be another reason,
too, for no one had ever spoken to him like Mr. Cope. Very few had
ever thrown him a kindly word, or seemed to treat him like a thing
with feelings, and those few had been rough and unmannerly; but Mr.
Cope's good-natured smile and pleasant manner had been a very
different thing; and perhaps Paul promised to come to the
Confirmation class, chiefly because of the friendly tone in which he
was invited.

When there, he really liked it. He had always liked what he was
taught, apart from the manner of teaching; and now both manner and
lessons were delightful to him. His answers were admirable, and it
was not all head knowledge, for very little more than a really kind
way of putting it was needed, to make him turn in his loneliness to
rest in the thought of the ever-present Father. Hard as the
discipline of his workhouse home had been, it had kept him from much
outward harm; the little he had seen in his wanderings had shocked
him, and he was more untaught in evil than many lads who thought
themselves more respectable, so there was no habit of wickedness to
harden and blunt him; and the application of all he had learnt
before, found his heart ready.

He had not gone to church since he left the workhouse: he did not
think it belonged to vagabonds like him; besides, he always felt
walls like a prison; and he had not profited much by the workhouse
prayers, which were read on week-days by the master, and on Sundays
by a chaplain, who always had more to do than he could manage, and
only went to the paupers when they were very ill. But when Mr. Cope
talked to him of the duty of going to church, he said, 'I will, Sir;'
and he sat in the gallery with the young lads, who were not quite as
delicate as Alfred.

The service seemed to rest him, and to be like being brought near a
friend; and he had been told that church might always be his home.
He took a pleasure in going thither--the more, perhaps, that he
rather liked to shew how little he cared for remarks upon his
appearance. There was a great deal of independence about him; and,
having escaped from the unloving maintenance of the parish, while he
had as yet been untaught what affection or gratitude meant, he WOULD
not be beholden to any one.

Scanty as were his wages, he would accept nothing from anybody; he
daily bought his portion of bread from Mrs. King, but it was of no
use for her to add a bit of cheese or bacon to it; he never would see
the relish, and left it behind; and so he never would accept Mr.
Cope's kind offers of giving him a bit of supper in his kitchen,
perhaps because he was afraid of being said to go to the Rectory for
the sake of what he could get.

He did not object to the farmer's beer, which was sometimes given him
when any unusual extra work had been put on him. That was his right,
for in truth the farmer did not pay him the value of his labour, and
perhaps disliked him the more, because of knowing in his conscience
that this was shameful extortion.

However, just at harvest time, when Paul's shoes had become very like
what may be sometimes picked up by the roadside, Mr. Shepherd did
actually bestow on him a pair that did not fit himself! Harold came
home quite proud of them.

However, on the third day they were gone, and the farmer's voice was
heard on the bridge, rating Paul violently for having changed them
away for drink.

Mrs. King felt sorrowful; but, as Ellen said, 'What could you expect
of him?' In spite of the affront, there was a sort of acquaintance
now over the counter between Mrs. King and young Blackthorn; and when
he came for his bread, she could not help saying, 'I'm sorry to see
you in those again.'

'Why, the others hurt me so, I could hardly get about,' said Paul.

'Ah! poor lad, I suppose your feet has got spread with wearing those
old ones; but you should try to use yourself to decent ones, or
you'll soon be barefoot; and I do think it was a pity to drink them
up.'

'That's all the farmer, Ma'am. He thinks one can't do anything but
drink.'

'Well, what is become of them?'

'Why, you see, Ma'am, they just suited Dick Royston, and he wanted a
pair of shoes, and I wanted a Bible and Prayer-book, so we changed
'em.'

When Ellen heard this, she could not help owning that Paul was a good
boy after all, though it was in an odd sort of way. But, alas! when
next he was to go to Mr. Cope, there was a hue-and-cry all over the
hay-loft for the Prayer-book. There was no place to put it safely,
or if there had been, Poor Paul was too great a sloven to think of
any such thing; and as it was in a somewhat rubbishy state to begin
with, it was most likely that one of the cows had eaten it with her
hay; and all that could be said was, that it would have been worse if
it had been the Bible.

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