Friarswood Post Office Part 20

'Poor lad!' she said kindly. 'I'll tell you what, Harold, all you can do is put him into your bed at once.--Here, Ellen, you run up first, and bring me a shirt to warm for him. Then we'll get his own clothes dried.'

'No, no,' cried Harold, with a caper, 'we'll make a scare-crow of 'em.

You don't know what I know, Mother. I've got twelve shillings and sixpence here all his own; and you'll see what I won't do with it at old Levi's, the second-hand clothes man, to-night.'

Harold grew less noisy as he saw how little good the fire was doing to his patient, and how ill his mother seemed to think him. He quietly obeyed her, by getting him up-stairs, and putting him into his own bed, the first in which Paul had lain down for more than four months. Then Mrs. King sent Harold out for some gin; she thought hot spirits and water the only chance of bringing back any life after such a dreadful chill; and she and Ellen kept on warming flannels and shawls to restore some heat, and to stop the trembling that shook the bed, so that Alfred felt it, even in the next room, where he lay with the door open, longing to be able to help, and wishing to understand what could have happened.

At last, the cordial and the warm applications effected some good. Paul was able to say, 'I don't know why you are so good to me,' and seemed ready to burst into a great fit of crying; but Mrs. King managed to stop him by saying something about one good turn deserving another, and that she hoped he was coming round now.

Harold was now at leisure to tell the story in his brother's room. Alfred did not grieve now at his brother's being able to do spirited things; he laughed out loud, and said, 'Well done, Harold!' at the switching, and rubbed his hands, and lighted up with glee, as he heard of the Ragglesford boys and their cheers; and then, Harold went eagerly on with his scheme for fitting up Paul at the second-hand shop, both Mrs. King and Alfred taking great interest in his plans, till Mrs. King hearing something like a moan, went back to Paul.

She found his cheeks and hands as burning hot as they had been cold; they were like live coals; and what was worse, such severe pains were running all over his limbs, that he was squeezing the clothes into his mouth that he might not scream aloud.

Happily it was Mr. Blunt's day for calling; and before the morning was over he came, and after a few words of explanation, he stood at Paul's bedside.

Not much given to tenderness towards the feelings of patients of his degree, Mr. Blunt's advice was soon given. 'Yes, he is in for rheumatic fever--won't be about again for a long time to come. I say, Mistress, all you've got to do is to send in your boy to the Union at Elbury, tell 'em to send out a cart for him, and take him in as a casual pauper. Then they may pa.s.s him on to his parish.'

Therewith Mr. Blunt went on to attend to Alfred.

'Then you think this poor lad will be ill a long time, Sir?' said Mrs.

King, when Mr. Blunt was preparing to depart.

'Of course he will; I never saw a clearer case! You'd better send him off as fast as you can, while he can be moved. He'll have a pretty bout of it, I dare say.

'It is nothing infectious, of course, Sir?' said the mother, a little startled by this hastiness.

'Infectious--nonsense! why, you know better than that, Mrs. King; I only meant that you'd better get rid of him as quick as you can, unless you wish to set up a hospital at once--and a capital nurse you'd be! I would leave word with the relieving officer for you, but that I've got to go on to Stoke, and shan't be at home till too late.'

Mrs. King's heart ached for the poor forlorn orphan, when she remembered what she had heard of the nursing in Elbury Union. She did not know how to turn him from her door the day he had saved her son from danger such as she could not think of without shuddering; and yet, what could she do?

Her rent and the winter before her, a heavy doctor's bill, and the loss of Alfred's work!

Slowly she went up the stairs again to the narrow landing that held the bed where Paul Blackthorn lay. He was quite still, but there were large tears coursing one after the other from his eyes, his hollow cheeks quite glazed with them.

'Is the pain so very bad?' she said in her soft voice, putting her hand over his hot forehead, in the way that Alfred liked.

'I don't--know,' he answered; and his black eyes, after looking up once in her face with the piteous earnest glance that some loving dogs have, shut themselves as if on purpose to keep in the tears, but she saw the dew squeezing out through the eye-lashes.

'My poor boy, I'm sure it's very bad for you,' she said again.

'Please, don't speak so kind,' said Paul; and this time he could not prevent a-sob. 'n.o.body ever did so before, and--' he paused, and went on, 'I suppose they do it up in Heaven, so I hope I shall die.'

'You are vexing about the Union,' said Mrs. King, without answering this last speech, or she knew that she should begin to cry herself.

'I _did_ think I'd done with them,' said Paul, with another sob. 'I said I'd never set foot in those four walls again! I was proud, maybe; but please don't stop with me! If you wouldn't look and speak like that, the place wouldn't seem so hard, seeing I'm bred to it, as they say;' and he made an odd sort of attempt to laugh, which ended in his choking himself with worse tears.

'Harold is not gone yet,' said Mrs. King soothingly; 'we'll wait till he comes in from his work, and see how you are, when you've had a little sleep. Don't cry; you aren't going just yet.'

That same earnest questioning glance, but with more hope in it, was turned on her again; but she did not dare to bind herself, much as she longed to take the wanderer to her home. She went on to her son's room.

'Mother, Mother,' Alfred cried in a whisper, so eager that it made him cough, 'you can't never send him to the workhouse?'

'I can't bear the thought, Alfy,' she said, the tears in her eyes; 'but I don't know what to do. It's not the trouble. That I'd take with all my heart, but it is hard enough to live, and--'

'I'm sure,' said Ellen, coming close, that her undertone might be heard, 'Harold and I would never mind how much we were pinched.'

'And I could go without--some things,' began Alfred.

'And then,' went on the mother, 'you see, if we got straitened, and Matilda found it out, she'd want to help, and I can't have her savings touched; and yet I can't bear to let that poor lad be sent off, so ill as he is, and after all he's done for Harold--such a good boy, too, and one that's so thankful for a common kind word.'

'O Mother, keep him!' said Alfred; 'don't you know how the Psalm says, "G.o.d careth for the stranger, and provideth for the fatherless and the widow"?'

Mrs. King almost smiled. 'Yes, Alf, I think it would be trusting G.o.d's word; but then there's my duty to you.'

'You've not sent Harold off for the cart?' said Alfred.

'No; I thought somehow, we have enough for to-day; and it goes against me to send him away at once. I thought we'd wait to see how it is to-morrow; and Harold won't mind having a bed made up in the kitchen.'

Tap, tap, on the counter. Some one had come in while they were talking.

It was Mr. Cope, very anxious to hear the truth of the strange stories that were going about the place. Ellen and Alfred thought it very tiresome that he was so long in coming up-stairs; but the fact was, that their mother was very glad to talk the matter over without them. She knew indeed that Mr. Cope was a very young man, and not likely to be so well able as herself, with all her experience, to decide what she could afford, or whether she ought to follow her feelings at the risk of debt or of privations for her delicate children; but she also knew that though he had not experience, education had given him a wider and clearer range of thought; and that, as her pastor, he ought to be consulted; so though she did not exactly mean to make it a matter for his decision (unless, indeed, he should have some view which had not occurred to her), she knew that he was by far the best person to help her to see her way, and form her own judgment.

Mr. Cope heard all the story with as much eagerness as the Ragglesford boys themselves, and laughed quite out loud at Harold's spirited defence.

'That's a good lad!' said he. 'Well, Mrs. King, I don't think you need be very uneasy about your boy. When a fellow can stand up like that in defence of his duty, there must be the right stuff in him to be got at in time! And now, as to his ally--this other poor fellow--very kind of you to have taken him in.'

'I couldn't do no other, Sir,' said Mrs. King; 'he came in so drenched, and so terribly bad, I could do nothing but let him lie down on Harold's bed; and now Dr. Blunt thinks he's going to have a rheumatic fever, and wanted me to send in to the relieving officer, to have him removed, but I don't know how to do that; the poor lad doesn't say one word against it, but I can see it cuts him to the heart; and they do tell such stories of the nurses at the Union, that it does seem hard to send him there, such an innocent boy, too, and one that doesn't seem to know how to believe it if one says a kind word to him.' The tears were in Mrs. King's eyes as she went on: 'I do wish to let him stay here and do what I can for him, with all my heart, and so does all the children, but I don't hardly know what's right by them, poor things. If the parish would but allow him just one shilling and sixpence a week out of the house, I think I could do it.'

'What, with your own boy in such a state, you could undertake to nurse a stranger through a rheumatic fever!'

'It wouldn't make much difference, Sir,' said Mrs. King. 'You see I am up a good deal most nights with Alfred, and we have fire and candle almost always alight. I should only be glad to do it for a poor motherless lad like that, except for the cost; and I thought perhaps if you could speak to the Guardians, they might allow him ever so little, because there will be expenses.'

Mr. Cope had not much hope from the parish, so he said, 'Mr. Shepherd ought to do something for him after he has worked for him so long. He has been looking wretchedly ill for some time past; and I dare say half this illness is brought on by such lodging and living as he got there.

But what did you say about some eggs?'

Mrs. King told him; and he stood a moment thoughtful, then said, 'Well, I'll go and see about it,' and strode across to the farm.

When Mr. Cope came back, Ellen was serving a customer. He stood looking redder than they had ever seen him, and tapping the toe of his boot impatiently with his stick; and the moment the buyer had turned away, he said, 'Ellen, ask your mother to be kind enough to come down.'

Mrs. King came, and found the young Curate in such a state of indignation, as he could not keep to himself. He had learnt more than he had ever known, or she had ever known, of the oppression that the farmer and his wife and Tom Boldre had practised on the friendless stranger, and he was burning with all the keen generous displeasure of one new to such base ways. At the gate he had met, going home to dinner, John Farden with Mrs. Hayward, who had been charing at the farm. Both had spoken out, and he had learned how far below the value of his labour the boy had been paid, how he had been struck, abused, and hunted about, as would never have been done to one who had a father to take his part. And he had further heard Farden's statement of having himself thrown away the eggs, and Mrs. Hayward's declaration that she verily believed that the farmer only made the accusation an excuse for hurrying the lad off because he thought him faltering for a fever, and wouldn't have him sick there.

This was shocking enough; Mr. Cope had thought it merely the kind-hearted woman's angry construction, but it was still worse when he came to the farmer and his wife.

So used were they to think it their business to wring the utmost they could out of whatever came in their way, that they had not the slightest shame about it. They thought they had done a thing to be proud of in making such a good bargain of the lad, and getting so much work out of him for so little pay; in fact, that they had been rather weakly kind in granting him the freedom of the hay-loft; the notion of his dishonesty was firmly fixed in their heads, though there was not a charge to bring against him. This was chiefly because they had begun by setting him down as a convict, and because they could not imagine any one living honestly on what they gave him. And lastly, the farmer thought the cleverest stroke of all, was the having got rid of him just as winter was coming on and work was scarce, and when there seemed to be a chance of his being laid up to enc.u.mber the rates. Mr. Cope was quite breathless after the answer he had made to them. He had never spoken so strongly in his life before, and he could hardly believe his own ears, that people could be found, not only to do such things, but to be proud of having done them.

It is to be hoped there are not many such thoroughgoing tyrants; but selfishness is always ready to make any one into a tyrant, and Mammon is a false G.o.d, who manages to make his servants satisfied that they are doing their duty.

It was plain enough that no help was to be expected from the farm, and neither Mrs. King nor the clergyman thought there was much hope in the Guardians; however, they were to be applied to, and this would be at least a reprieve for Paul. Mr. Cope went up to see him, and found Harold sitting on the top step of the stairs.

'Well, boys,' he said, in his hearty voice, 'so you've had a battle, I hear. I'm glad it turned out better than your namesake's at Hastings.'