Part 8 (1/2)

They had no notion of going to school again--which no one wanted them to do--nor to church, because it was like little boys; and they wouldn't be obliged.

So Mr. Cope made little way with them; a few who had better parents came regularly to him, but others went off when they found it too much trouble, and behaved worse than ever by way of shewing they did not care.

This folly had in some degree taken possession of Harold; and though he could not be as bad as were some of the others, he was fast growing impatient of restraint, and worried and angry, as if any word of good advice affronted him. Driven from home by the fear of disturbing Alfred, he was left the more to the company of boys who made him ashamed of being ordered by his mother; and there was a jaunty careless style about all his ways of talking and moving, that shewed there was something wrong about him--he scorned Ellen, and was as saucy as he dared even to his mother; and though Mr. Cope found him better instructed than most of his scholars, he saw him quite as idle, as restless at church, and as ready to whisper and grin at improper times, as many who had never been trained like him.

One August Sunday afternoon, Mrs. King was with Alfred while Ellen was at church. He was lying on his couch, very uncomfortable and fretful, when to the surprise of both, a knock was heard at the door. Mrs. King looked out of the window, and a smart, hard-looking, pigeon's-neck silk bonnet at once nodded to her, and a voice said, 'I've come over to see you, Cousin King, if you'll come down and let me in. I knew I should find you at home.'

'Betsey Hardman!' exclaimed Alfred, in dismay; 'you won't let her come up here, Mother?'

'Not if I can help it,' said Mrs. King, sighing. If there were a thing she disliked above all others, it was Sunday visiting.

'You must help it, Mother,' said Alfred, in his most pettish tones. 'I won't have her here, worrying with her voice like a hen cackling. Say you won't let her come her!'

'Very well,' said Mrs. King, in doubt of her own powers, and in haste to be decently civil.

'Say you won't,' repeated Alfred. 'Gadding about of a Sunday, and leaving her old sick mother--more shame for her! Promise, Mother!'

He had nearly begun to cry at his mother's unkindness in running down- stairs without making the promise, for, in fact, Mrs. King had too much conscience to gain present quiet for any one by promises she might be forced to break; and Betsey Hardman was only too well known.

Her mother was an aunt of Alfred's father, an old decrepit widow, nearly bed-ridden, but pretty well to do, by being maintained chiefly by her daughter, who made a good thing of taking in was.h.i.+ng in the suburbs of Elbury, and always had a girl or two under her. She had neither had the education, nor the good training in service, that had fallen to Mrs.

King's lot; and her way of life did not lead to softening her tongue or temper. Ellen called her vulgar, and though that is not a nice word to use, she was coa.r.s.e in her ways of talking and thinking, loud-voiced, and unmannerly, although meaning to be very good-natured.

Alfred lay in fear of her step, ten times harder than Harold's in his most boisterous mood, coming clamp clamp! up the stairs; and her shrill voice--the same tone in which she bawled to her deaf mother, and hallooed to her girls when they were hanging out the clothes in the high wind--coming pitying him--ay, and perhaps her whole weight lumbering down on the couch beside him, shaking every joint in his body! His mother's ways, learnt in the Selby nursery, had made him more tender, and more easily fretted by such things, than most cottage lads, who would have been used to them, and never have thought of not liking to have every neighbour who chose running up into the room, and talking without regard to subject or tone.

He listened in a fright to the latch of the door, and the coming in.

Betsey's voice came up, through every c.h.i.n.k of the boards, whatever she did herself; and he could hear every word of her greeting, as she said how it was such a fine day, she said to Mother she would take a holiday, and come and see Cousin King and the poor lad: it must be mighty dull for him, moped up there.

Stump! stump! Was she coming? His mother was answering something too soft for him to hear.

'What, is he asleep?'

'O Mother, must you speak the truth?'

'Bless me! I should have thought a little cheerful company was good for him. Do you leave him quite alone? Well--' and there was a frightful noise of the foot of the heaviest chair on the floor. 'I'll sit down and wait a bit! Is he so very fractious, then?'

What was his mother saying? Alfred clenched his fist, and grinned anger at Betsey with closed teeth. There was the tiresome old word, 'Low--ay, so's my mother; but you should rise his spirits with company, you see; that's why I came over; as soon as ever I heard that there wasn't no hope of him, says I to Mother--'

What? What was that she had heard? There was his mother, probably trying to restrain her voice, for it came up now just loud enough to make it most distressing to try to catch the words, which sounded like something pitying. 'Ay, ay--just like his poor father; when they be decliny, it will come out one ways or another; and says I to Mother, I'll go over and cheer poor Cousin King up a bit, for you see, after all, if he'd lived, he'd be nothing but a burden, crippled up like that; and a lingering job is always bad for poor folks.'

Alfred leant upon his elbow, his eyes full stretched, but feeling as if all his senses had gone into his ears, in his agony to hear more; and he even seemed to catch his mother's voice, but there was no hope in that; it was of her knowing it would be all for the best; and the sadness of it told him that she believed the same as Betsey. Then came, 'Yes; I declare it gave me such a turn, you might have knocked me down with a feather. I asked Mr. Blunt to come in and see what's good for Mother, she feels so weak at times, and has such a noise in her head, just like the regiment playing drums, she says, till she can't hardly bear herself; and so what do you think he says? Don't wrap up her head so warm, says he--a pretty thing for a doctor to say, as if a poor old creature like that, past seventy years old, could go without a bit of flannel to her head, and her three night-caps, and a shawl over them when there's a draught. I say, Cousin, I ha'n't got much opinion of Mr. Blunt. Why don't you get some of them boxes of pills, that does cures wonderful?

Ever so many lords and ladies cured of a perplexity fit, by only just taking an imposing draught or two.'

Another time Alfred would have laughed at the very imposing draught, that was said to cure lords and ladies of this jumble between apoplexy and paralysis; but this was no moment for laughing, and he was in despair at fancying his mother wanted to lead her off on the quack medicine; but she went on.

'Well, only read the papers that come with them. I make my girl Sally read 'em all to me, being that she's a better scholar; and the long words is quite heavenly--I declare there ain't one of them shorter than peregrination. I'd have brought one of them over to shew you if I hadn't come away in a hurry, because Evans's cart was going out to the merry orchard, and says I to Mother, Well, I'll get a lift now there's such a chance to Friarswood: it'll do them all a bit of good to see a bit of cheerful company, seeing, as Mr. Blunt says, that poor lad is going after his father as fast as can be. Dear me, says I, you don't say so, such a fine healthy-looking chap as he was. Yes, he says, but it's in the const.i.tution; it's getting to the lungs, and he'll never last out the winter.'

Alfred listened for the tone of his mother's voice; he knew he should judge by that, even without catching the words--low, subdued, sad--he almost thought she began with 'Yes.'

All the rest that he heard pa.s.sed by him merely as a sound, noted no more than the lowing of the cattle, or the drone of the thras.h.i.+ng machine. He lay half lifted up on his pillows, drawing his breath short with apprehension; his days were numbered, and death was coming fast, fast, straight upon him. He felt it within himself--he knew now the meaning of the pain and sinking, the shortness of breath and choking of throat that had been growing on him through the long summer days; he was being 'cut off with pining sickness,' and his sentence had gone forth. He would have screamed for his mother in the sore terror and agony that had come over him, in hopes she might drive the notion from him; but the dread of seeing her followed by that woman kept his lips shut, except for his long gasps of breath.