The Travellers Part 3

"Och, my master, I could not miss liking it, ye are all so free and hospitable."

"But Biddy," said Julia, "how could you leave your father and mother, and all your friends?"

"Sure it is, miss, if it thrives well with me they will all come after."

"Sure enough," said Mrs. Sackville, "these poor Irish do all come _after_, sooner or later. Are you a catholic, Biddy?"

"I come from the north of Ireland, my leddy."

"You are a protestant, then?"

"Yes, my leddy; thank G.o.d and my mother, that taught me the rasonable truth."

"Can you read, my good girl?"

"Indeed can I, my leddy. Thanks to the Sunday school, I could read in the bible if I had one, without a blunder."

"Well, Biddy," said Mrs. Sackville, who thought it a good opportunity to give a G.o.d-speed to the girl's pilgrimage--"here is a bible in my basket--take it, and may it be the guide of your life."

Biddy poured forth her thanks in many a G.o.d-reward-ye, and then after hesitating for a moment, she said, "I wish my leddy would condescend to walk up here a bit, to a poor woman who needs a kind christian word, poor crater." Mrs. Sackville and the children followed Biddy to a tree which stood a little above the encampment of the Irish, where a woman was sitting on a log with a sick child in her arms, and a boy of five or six beside her.

She was a middle-aged woman, with a face originally plain, and deeply seamed with the small-pox; but withal, there was an expression of honesty and goodness, and of deep sadness, that interested Mrs. Sackville, though at first it failed to draw the attention of the children from their good-humored blithe companion.

"Does this woman belong to your company, Biddy?"

"Bless you, no, my leddy."--"I thought not," said Mrs. Sackville, who was struck with the extreme neatness of the woman's appearance, which presented a striking contrast to all the Irish, even to our friend Biddy.--Her child's head was covered with a linen handkerchief--coa.r.s.e and patched, but white as the driven snow. There was scarcely a thread of the original cloth in her children's clothes--neither was there a hole in them--their faces and hands were perfectly clean, and their hair neatly combed.

"You seem to find it possible, my friend," said Mrs. Sackville, patting the little boy's face, "to keep your children clean in the most difficult circ.u.mstances." "I try my best, ma'am," replied the woman. "And a slave, my leddy," interposed Biddy, "she makes of herself for it. Do you know that when I offered this morning to stay by the childer while she took a bit of sleep, that instead of resting her soul and body, she went and washed her things in the river, and got leave to iron in the house yonder, and did it all as particular as it might have been done for you, my leddy."

The poor woman was wetting the sick child's lips from a cup of water that stood by her; and she took no notice of Biddy's remark. Mrs. Sackville inquired into the particulars of the child's sickness, which she thought would yield to some common restoratives which she had at hand; and just as she was dispatching Julia for the dressing case which contained them, a little rugged impish looking boy came towards them, throwing himself heels over head, with a segar in his mouth, which he continued smoking while he was making his somersets.--"Come, come, Goody Barton," said he, without heeding Mrs. Sackville's presence, "come, we must be up and moving. If we don't get over in this boat, I shall disappoint the company at Chippewa to-night."

"Don't speak so loud, Tristy," replied the woman, "but take the pack to the boat, and I will follow you."

"That surely is not your child?" said Mrs. Sackville, as the boy walked off with the bundle singing, at the top of his voice, a very vulgar song, and affecting to reel like a drunken man.

"No, thank G.o.d," said the woman, "he is a poor heaven-forsaken lad, who is going into Canada. He has helped me along from Buffalo, and has offered to carry my bundle to Chippewa."

It occurred to Mrs. Sackville to caution the woman to be on her guard, for she thought Tristy looked wicked enough for any mischief; but a signal from the boat obliged them all to hasten to the sh.o.r.e. Biddy good naturedly took the eldest boy by the hand and led him to the boat, and then took leave of all her new friends, pouring forth a shower of prayers that G.o.d would bless them all, rich and poor.

The woman, whom we shall henceforth call by her name, Mrs. Barton, was reserved in the expression of her feelings; but the tear of grat.i.tude she dropped on Biddy's hand at parting, was an equivalent for the girl's voluble expressions.

There was, in all the poor woman's manner, an un.o.btrusiveness and reserve uncommon in a person of her humble degree, and it interested Mrs. Sackville more than any solicitation could have done. She ascertained that Mrs. Barton was on her way to Quebec, where she _hoped_ to find her husband.

"And have you the means of getting there?" asked Mrs. Sackville. "It is a great distance, my friend, and you cannot get across Ontario and down the St. Lawrence for a trifle."

"I know that, madam; but I have some money; and if I find my own country people as kind to me as the people in the States have been, I shall do very well. Every body feels pitiful to a lone woman with little children.

If it please G.o.d to mend my little girl, I shall go on with good courage."

Mrs. Sackville commended the poor woman's resolution, and busied herself putting up some medicines for the child, and giving directions about them, and was so occupied with her benevolent duty, that she gave little heed to Edward's continued exclamations. "Oh, mother! how beautiful the colour of the water of the Niagara is!" "Mother, does not it give you sublime feelings to think you are on the Niagara?" "Mother, does not Lake Erie look grand from here?" &c. &c. &c. Suddenly his attention was diverted, and he was attracted to the extremity of the boat, where Tristy, the little "Flibbertigibbet" we have before mentioned, was exhibiting various feats for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the pa.s.sengers. He was a little, pale, wizened-face fellow, with a bleared and blood-shot eye, his hair black, strait, and matted to his head, his mouth defiled with tobacco, and in short his whole appearance indicating the depravity of one experienced in vice. He dislocated the joints of his fingers, stood firmly on his head, and performed some of the difficult exploits of a tumbler; and when he had done all this, "Come, gentlemen," said he, "shall I sing you a song, or pray you a prayer? I'll suit your fancy with either for a sixpence."

"No, no; none of your prayers, you little son of the old one," said one of the men; "we shall have your master with the cloven foot after us before we get to the sh.o.r.e: you may sing us a song, though, only let it be a decent one."

"Oh, well gentlemen, suit yourselves--I am a Jack at all trades, you know--that is to say, at any of the trades my father, that is dead and gone, followed before me."

"Trades! your father followed no trade, but the trade of the light-fingered gentry."

"I beg your pardon, sir; my dad was a noted man in his day:--a carpenter, joiner, tooth-drawer, barber, gardener, studying-master, dancing-master, whipping-master, fiddling-master, school-master, music-master, play-actor, &c. &c.--all of which I am yours gentlemen to command. Now for the song:--there is Erie, and my song is Perry's glorious victory." He then half sung, half recited, a ballad recounting Perry's gallant exploits on the lake.

It was impossible for a compa.s.sionate being to see the little outcast without an emotion of pity; or not to be affected by the weak and almost infantine tones of his voice.

"How old are you, child?" asked Mr. Sackville, as the boy concluded his song, and opened his mouth to catch the sixpence that was tossed to him.

"How old? I do not justly remember; but there is my age set down in our family Bible, as my father called it, by his own honored hand, on the day he got through, as I have heard him say, his fourth term of service at the state-castle."

Mr. Sackville took from the child's hand a filthy little dream-book, on the t.i.tle-page of which was scrawled, and scarcely legible,--"Tristram McPhelan, born in the Bridewell, city of New-York, on Friday--bad luck to him--March 1807."

"You are then but eleven years old."

"Yes sir; and in that time I have seen more of life than many of my betters twice my age. I have been in every state in the Union, and in every city of every state. I have been in six alms-houses, two workhouses, and ten jails, on my own account, besides the privilege of visiting my father in two different state prisons. While my father lived we travelled in company, and now I am obliged (he concluded, bowing to Mr. Sackville,) to put up with what company chance throws in my way."

Mr. Sackville took Edward by the hand, and turned away, grieved and disgusted. His eye fell on his daughter, who was sitting beside Mrs. Barton, carefully sheltering the sick child from the sun with her parasol, while she nicely prepared an orange and offered it to her.

The little sufferer seized it eagerly and devoured it, and then fixed her eyes on Julia and smiled. The first smile of a sick child is electrifying.

"Oh! miss," said the mother, "does not she seem to say, 'G.o.d bless you,'

though she cannot speak it?"

Julia was delighted with the revival of the child, and with the mother's grat.i.tude, which was even more manifest in her brightened countenance than in her words.

"My medicine," said Julia, "has worked wonders; if I could but find one more orange, I should quite cure my little patient;" and she zealously ransacked the carriage, and turned out every basket and bag in the hope of finding another, but all in vain. Disappointed, she turned to her mother,--"Cannot we, mama," she said, "do something more for this poor woman before we leave her?"

"I do not see that we can, my dear," replied Mrs. Sackville, "I have offered to pay her stage fare hence to Newark, but she says she has money, and declines receiving any thing."

"Oh, then she is not obliged to go on foot--I could not endure to think of the child's being exposed to this hot sun."

"That, I am afraid, cannot be helped; for the mother does go to Newark on foot. I could not persuade her to ride. She insists that she is very strong, and that her child is so wasted she scarcely feels the burthen of it; and besides, she travels but a very short distance in a day."

Julia paused for a moment. She was very reluctant to give up the point, and finally, as the last resource of her ingenuity, she proposed that her mother should take the woman into the carriage. "We can just squeeze her in for a few miles, mama; she looks so perfectly nice, that even uncle can't object; and I want so to know if the little girl continues to get better."

Mrs. Sackville could scarcely refrain from smiling at Julia's odd proposition to take in a way-faring woman and two children, but it had its source in such kind feelings, that she would not ridicule it. "I am afraid, my dear Julia," she said, "that it is quite impossible to gratify you. You know your uncle already complains of wanting elbow-room."

"Well then, mother, just listen to one more proposal:--take the woman into the carriage, and let Edward and me walk two or three miles. Three miles will be quite a lift to her, and Ned will lead the little boy."

Mrs. Sackville could not resist Julia's eagerness, and after some consultation with her husband and brother, she consented to the arrangement, though it involved them in some inconvenience and delay. It was as much a matter of principle as feeling with her, never to permit her own personal accommodation to interfere with the claims of humanity.

A child is more impressed with a single example of disinterestedness, than with a hundred admonitions on the subject. Mrs. Sackville had some difficulty in overcoming the scruples of Mrs. Barton, who felt a modest awkwardness at seating herself in the carriage with her superiors; but when they reached the Canada sh.o.r.e, the necessary arrangements were made, and she being at last persuaded, on the ground of gratifying the children, took their place in the carriage, and it drove off and left Edward and Julia to follow with little Richard Barton, and Tristram with the wallet.

Mr. Morris was one of those thrifty people, who can never see any necessity of poverty, and though he was in the main kind hearted, he was rather inclined to be severe in his judgment of the wretched. Poverty was always suspicious in his eyes. No sooner were they seated and well under way, than he said, "It is a mystery to me, my good woman, why people who have not any spare cash should always be travelling.

Sometimes they are going up country to see a relation--and sometimes down country. All their kindred are sure to live at their antipodes."