Spring in a Shropshire Abbey. Gaskell Catherine Henrietta Milnes

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СКАЧАТЬ we mounted the hill, and I got out and led the old pony to ease its burden, for a sledge is always a heavy weight when it has to be dragged up hill. At last old Jenny James’s cottage was reached, and her parcel duly handed out.

      “I like giving things,” said Bess, superbly. “It seems to make you happier.”

      “Yes,” I answered; “but gifts are best when we give something that we want ourselves.”

      “Don’t you want the blankets, mama?” asked Bess, abruptly.

      “Well, not exactly, dear,” I answered. “Giving them didn’t mean that I had to go without my dinner, or even had to give up ordering my seed list this morning.”

      “Must one really do that,” asked Bess sadly, “before one can give anything?”

      “Perhaps, little one,” I said, “to taste the very best happiness.” Then there was a little pause, which was at last broken by Bess turning crimson and saying —

      “Mamsie, I think it must be very, very difficult to be quite, quite happy.”

GIFTS TO THE POOR

      I did not explain, but saw from Bess’s expression that I had sown a grain of a seed, and wondered when it would blossom. Then we turned round and slipped down the hill at a brisk rattle, all the dogs following hotly behind, to an old dame who had long had a promise of a blanket. The old body came out joyfully and stood by her wicket gate, beaming with pleasure. It is an awful thing, sometimes, the joy of the poor over some little gift. It brings home to us at times our own unworthiness more than anything else.

      Old Sukey, as she is called by her neighbours, took her blankets from Bess with delight. “I shall sleep now,” she said, “like a cat by the hearth, come summer come winter,” and her old wrinkled face began to twitch, and tears to rise in her poor old rheumy eyes. “Pretty dear,” she said to Bess, “’tis most like a blow itself. I wish I had a bloom to offer, but ’tis only a blessing now that I can give thee.”

      Again we turned, and pattered back post-haste up the Barrow Road to a distant cottage.

      “Is it a good thing to get a blessing?” asked Bess, suddenly.

      “A very good thing, for it makes even the richest richer.”

      “Then,” answered Bess, “when I grow up I mean to get a great many blessings.”

      “How, little one, will you do that?”

      “Why,” answered Bess, “I shall give to everybody everything they want, and buy for all the children all the toys that I can find.”

      “But supposing that you are not rich, that you haven’t money in your purse, or a cheque-book from the bank like papa?”

      “Then I shall have to pray – and that will do it, for I’m sure the good Lord wouldn’t like to disoblige me.”

      At last all our visits were paid, and we had left seven happy old souls, whom it was a comfort to think would all sleep the sounder for our visit of that day.

      As we drove home, Bess suddenly turned round and said —

      “Mamsie, why can’t they buy blankets?”

      It is very hard for the child-mind to grasp that the necessities of life – bread, blankets, and beds – do not come, in a child’s language, “all by themselves.”

      Puppies, pets, and chocolates, children can understand have to be paid for; but the dull things, they consider, surely ought to grow quite naturally, like the trees outside the nursery windows, all by themselves, and of their own accord, as they would say.

      I tried to explain to Bess what poverty really was, and told her what it would mean to have no money, but to buy the absolute bare necessities of life. Bess listened open-mouthed, and at the end exclaimed —

      “Why has God given me so much, and to poor children, then, so little?”

      “I wonder,” I replied; “but, anyway, as you have got so much, you must do what you can to make other little boys and girls happier. For God, when he gives much, will also ask much some day.”

      Bess did not answer, and we drove back in silence. It was very still along the country lanes, save for the tinkling of the joyous bells. Behind us followed our pack, Mouse panting somewhat, for she had fed at luncheon time, not wisely, but too well; but Tramp and Tartar scampered gaily after us. The whole country seemed enveloped in a white winding-sheet, and the sunlight was dying out of the west. A soft white mist was stealing up over all, but the voice of death was gentle, calm, almost sweet, across the silent world. Cottages looked out by their windows, blinking, and appeared almost as white as the snow beneath them.

      Old Bluebell seemed to know that her trot to the Abbey was her last journey, and went with a good will. We passed the new hospital, dashed down Sheinton Street, and so into the Italian gates by the old Watch Tower of the abbot’s, beyond the old Bull Ring where, through many centuries, bulls were baited by dogs.

“I WANT TO BE HAPPY”

      As we drew up before the door, Bess exclaimed, regretfully —

      “Oh, mama, why has it all stopped? I should like driving in a sledge to go on for ever and ever.”

      I kissed the little maid, and we went into tea. Bess hardly spoke, and I thought her wearied by the excitement of the drive, but that night, when I went up to see her in bed, she called out —

      “Mamsie, mamsie, come quite close. A secret.” So I sat down on the little bed, and the little arms went round my neck. “Mama, I have looked out a heap – a heap of toys – to send off to poor children. My new doll Sabrina, my blue pig, my little box of tea things, the new Noah’s Ark, but Nana will not pack them up. She says they’re too good for poor children. Isn’t she wicked, for I want to give them all, and to be happy – happy as you mean me to be.”

      CHAPTER II

      FEBRUARY

      “The Hag is astride

      This night for to ride,

      The devil and she together,

      Through thick and through thin,

      Now out, and now in,

      Though ne’er so foule be the weather.”

Herrick’s Hesperides.

      Some weeks had passed, and I had been away from home. Rain had fallen, and the snow had vanished like a dream – the first dawn of spring had come. Not spring as we know her in the South of France or in Southern Italy – gorgeous, gay, debonair – but shy, coy, and timid. The spring of the North is like a maiden of the hills, timid and reserved, yet infinitely attractive, what our French friends would call “une sensitive.”

      There was, as yet, very little appearance that winter “brear Winter,” as Spenser calls him, was routed and obliged with his legions of frost and snow, to fly before the arrival of youth and life, and the breath of triumphant zephyrs. A spring in the North is chiefly proclaimed by the voice of the stormcock in some apple tree, by the green peering noses of snowdrops, and here and there a crimson tassel on the hazel tree and larch; but, above all, by the splendour of golden and purple lights which come and go across the hillsides and athwart wood and coppice. The turf, as I walked along, I noticed was moist and soft, and oozed up under my feet. February fill-dyke, as she is called, had come in due order, and in appointed form. Little puddles glistened on the СКАЧАТЬ