‘Bring up that dirty boy! I should like to see you!’ cried Ellen, making such a face. ‘I don’t believe a word of his coming out of the Union. I’m sure he’s run away out of gaol, by the look of him!’
‘Ellen—Harold—come down to your tea!’ called Mrs. King.
So they went down; and presently, while Mrs. King was gone up to give Alfred his tea, there came Mrs. Shepherd bustling across, with her black silk apron thrown over her cap with the crimson gauze ribbons. She wanted a bit of tape, and if there were none in the shop, Harold must match it in Elbury when he took the letters.
Ellen was rather familiar with Mrs. Shepherd, because she made her gowns, and they had some talk about the new clergyman. Mrs. Shepherd did not care for clergymen much; if she had done so, she might not have been so hard with her labourers. She was always afraid of their asking her to subscribe to something or other, so she gave it as her opinion, that she should never think it worth while to listen to such a very young man as that, and she hoped he would not stay; and then she said, ‘So your brother was taking up with that come-by-chance lad, I saw. Did he make anything out of him?’
‘He fancies him more than I like, or Mother either,’ said Ellen. ‘He says he’s out of Upperscote Union; but he’s a thorough impudent one, and owns he’s no father nor mother, nor nothing belonging to him. I think it is a deal more likely that he is run away from some reformatory, or prison.’
‘That’s just what I said to the farmer!’ said Mrs. Shepherd. ‘I said he was out of some place of that sort. I’m sure it’s a sin for the gentlemen to be setting up such places, raising the county rates, and pampering up a set of young rogues to let loose on us. Ay! ay! I’ll warrant he’s a runaway thief! I told the farmer he’d take him to his sorrow, but you see he is short of hands just now, and the men are so set up and grabbing, I don’t know how farmers is to live.’
So Mrs. Shepherd went away grumbling, instead of being thankful for the beautiful crop of hay, safely housed, before the thunder shower which had saved the turnips from the fly.
Ellen might have doubted whether she had done right in helping to give the boy a bad name, but just then in came the ostler from the Tankard with some letters.
‘Here!’ he said, ‘here’s one from one of the gentlemen lodging here fishing, to Cayenne. You’ll please to see how much there is to pay.’
Ellen looked at her Postal Guide, but she was quite at a fault, and she called up-stairs to Alfred to ask if he knew where she should look for Cayenne. He was rather fond of maps, and knew a good deal of geography for a boy of his age, but he knew nothing about this place, and she was just thinking of sending back the letter, to ask the gentleman where it was, when a voice said:
‘Try Guiana, or else South America.’
She looked up, and there were Paul’s dirty face and dirtier elbows, leaning over the half-door of the shop.
‘Why, how do you know?’ she said, starting back.
‘I learnt at school, Cayenne, capital of French Guiana.’ Sure enough Cayenne had Guiana to it in her list, and the price was found out.
But when this learned geographer advanced into the shop, and asked for a loaf, what a hand and what a sleeve did he stretch out! Ellen scarcely liked to touch his money, and felt all her disgust revive. But, for all that, and for all her fear of Harold’s running into mischief, what business had she to set it about that the stranger was an escaped convict?
Meanwhile, Alfred had plenty of food for dreaming over his fellow sufferer. It really seemed to quiet him to think of another in the same case, and how many questions he longed to have asked Mr. Cope! He wanted to know whether it came easier to Jem to be patient than to himself; whether he suffered as much wearing pain; whether he grieved over the last hope of using his limbs; and above all, the question he knew he never could bear to ask, whether Jem had the dread of death to scare his thoughts, though never confessed to himself.
He longed for Mr. Cope’s next visit, and felt strongly drawn towards that thought of Jem, yet ashamed to think of himself as so much less patient and submissive; so little able to take comfort in what seemed to soothe Jem, that it was the Lord’s doing. Could Jem think he had been a wicked boy, and take it as punishment?
CHAPTER IV—PAUL BLACKTHORN
‘I say,’ cried Harold, running up into his brother’s room, as soon as he had put away the pony, ‘do you know whether Paul is gone?’
‘It is always Paul, Paul!’ exclaimed Ellen; ‘I’m sure I hope he is.’
‘But why do you think he would be?’ asked Alfred.
‘Oh, didn’t you hear? He knows no more than a baby about anything, and so he turned the cows into Darnel meadow, and never put the hurdle to stop the gap—never thinking they could get down the bank; so the farmer found them in the barley, and if he did not run out against him downright shameful—though Paul up and told him the truth, that ’twas nobody else that did it.’
‘What, and turned him off?’
‘Well, that’s what I want to know,’ said Harold, going on with his tea. ‘Paul said to me he didn’t know how he could stand the like of that—and yet he didn’t like to be off—he’d taken a fancy to the place, you see, and there’s me, and there’s old Cæsar—and so he said he wouldn’t go unless the farmer sent him off when he came to be paid this evening—and old Skinflint has got him so cheap, I don’t think he will.’
‘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