Friarswood Post Office Part 16

'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 G.o.d 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?'

'G.o.d'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 hards.h.i.+p 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 d.i.c.k 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 p.r.i.c.kles.

Those thorns were galling poor Paul. n.o.body 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, n.o.body 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 s.e.xton'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 peris.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+lling, 'Look here, Charles, do you think you can manage to get that poor fellow a tolerable breakfast on Sat.u.r.day 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 pa.s.sed 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 Caesar 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.'

'n.o.body 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 s.h.a.ggy 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.'