Thomas and Barbara Bartley

On looking back upon the time of boyhood, I become alive to the fact that it went by without my enjoying but little of the careless blithesomeness which falls to the lot of nearly every lad, no matter what the station of his family. Even before I got to know want or trouble at home, my mother’s Puritanical austerity set bounds upon my play, numbered my companions, and limited my enjoyment. Some sort of knowledge of “the Fall of Man,” “the Two Covenants,” and similar subjects, was dinned into my head when I ought to have been playing marbles. While those of like age were “hunting the hare,” I would be kept at home to learn portions of the great Psalm. No wonder I was the worst at a game of any in Soldier Robin’s school, and that even the girls made fun of me. I would not, for anything I ever saw, say a disrespectful word of my mother, for I believe her intentions to have been pure as a sunbeam. But I fear that to her ignorance is to be attributed my bodily weakness, the sadness and the depression of spirit I am so subject to, and which, by this time, sits as a disease upon me. Before I could rejoice in the innocence of youth, I was being grounded in particulars of the estate my father Adam had left me, taught the ins and outs of my depraved heart, and the tricks and wiles of the old gentleman who goes about like a roaring lion. In a word, the dark side of human nature had been portrayed to me with all the hideous deformity my mother’s gifts enabled her to bring to bear upon the work. The teaching had its effect; and, by this time, I do not wonder my companions got to call me “the old man.”

I was thirteen when my brother was sent to prison; but it was not as a boy of that age I felt the shame and grief of the occurrence. It was no day-and-night’s trouble, to be cured on the morrow by the cheerfulness of sportive comrades. Sorrow filled my soul and bred a worm in my heart that not even my faithful, merry friend Will Bryan could kill. I cannot easily describe my state of mind. It was a mixture of genuine sympathy with my brother in his sufferings, a deep conviction of his innocence and an increasing admiration of his character. I must confess to a wounded pride, a spirit of revenge, and a disposition to quarrel with the decrees of Providence. I know quite well that I was not in a proper frame of mind; because when I heard that, on the day following the one on which my brother and his associates were sent to prison, a frightful havoc had been played with the Hall owner’s game, I felt delighted, although I dared not say as much to mother, The sense of vacancy to which my brother’s absence gave rise was almost as painful as the circumstances which had occasioned that absence itself. Without him our home was like a body without a soul, the want of life affecting one as strangely as if he had been for hours in a mill, and found all its wheels coming to a sudden stop. I missed his manly presence, his resonant voice, and ready wit, and home was no longer home to me. Although she did not say so, I knew my mother felt the same, In the course of a single day the colour and aspect of her face changed. The remnants of its youthful bloom vanished, never to return; and beneath the eyes of blue did Adversity leave the imprint of his name in blackletter. Often during the day did she go to the door, looking out each time in the same direction, as if hoping against hope to see her boy return. So deeply convinced was she of his innocence and the injustice of his imprisonment, that I am not sure she did not rather expect some supernatural intervention for his release. I do not know whether it was force of habit, or something else, which made her, at meals, prepare for three of us; but I saw her more than once, as at tea time, laying three cups upon the table, and, perceiving her mistake, secretly putting one of them away again, thinking I had not observed her. I could note down many other little things she did, as showing her dreamy absent-mindedness. All my brother’s belongings were laid under tribute to her condition. She would wipe the dust from his English books, against which she had been strongly prejudiced previously, and frequently turn the leaves, although she understood not a word they contained. I fancy I was perfectly cognisant of the state of her feelings, although I cannot now convey it in words. Hers was no surface trouble, but one reaching down into the depths of the soul and carrying with it a whole host of the painful associations. And yet it was not a hopeless sorrow that she suffered, either; but a sadness, rather, which seemed to span the distance from the abyss of affliction up to a firm faith in Him who rules over all. She read her Bible a good deal, and spoke cheerfully; but I knew it cost her a great effort to do so.

As on the preceding day. Thomas and Barbara Bartley were the first to visit us; and I felt very thankful for their kindness. As I have already remarked, they were a couple of simple, harmless old souls. They appeared to me to be wonderfully happy, always. In addition to being suitably matched as husband and wife, there was a similarity both of feature and mind between them. Whatever Thomas might say, Barbara, with a nod, would confirm; and whatever Barbara said, Thomas would seal with a “To be shwar.” They were like two eyes on one string, at all times looking the same way. Small was the circle of their lives, and the amount of their knowledge about the same. Planting a potato patch and killing a pig, ten score weight, were the two poles on which their little world made its annual revolution. It seemed as if Providence, in drafting a scheme of life, had forgotten to set down trouble or trial against the names of Thomas and Barbara Bartley, with the exception of the death of their son Seth, and even that appeared as if it were a mistake, for it turned out a means of perfecting their happiness. Thomas had a great name as a mender of shoes, and was never short of work. He was also considered an excellent neighbour. He was not a total abstainer, but he never got drunk, save on special occasions, such as Whit-Monday, when his club walked. But even on those occasions, Barbara would not admit he was drunk—he had only “taken a drop.” Both believed they had good hearts and that to live honestly was quite enough of religion. And they, doubtless, did live up to their professions, for it was never heard of Thomas and Barbara that they had “subverted a man in his cause,” or of the first named that he had put bad work into a shoe. Theirs was not merely a cold and formal honesty, either. None so ready as they to do kindnesses, for which, it is probable, they took credit as for works of supererogation. In passing, I may say that I have, in the course of my short life, met with people of higher spiritual pretensions with whom it were well had their religion come up to that of Thomas and Barbara Bartley. But this is what I was about to relate—the two old folk came to visit us in our trouble, and we had a long talk, too long for me to repeat. Let the few words following serve as a sample of the whole. After they had sat down, said Thomas:—

“Well Mary Lewis, you be in a bit of a bother, ben’t you? I’m sorry in my heart for you.”

Barbara gave a nod which meant “ditto.”

“I am so, Thomas bach,” replied my mother, “and I’m very much obliged to you for your sympathy. His way is in the sea, and His path in the great waters. Clouds and darkness encompass Him—but He knows——.”

“Hold on a bit, Mary/ac/i,” said Thomas, “you are wrong there. Isn’t it to jail poor Bob’s gone? Not over the sea at all—not transported. You’ve got your head in the ash-pit over this, and you fancy things to be worsen they are. Save us! The boy never went near the sea.”

“I know that, well enough, Thomas. It’s of the Great King’s government I’m speaking,” returned my mother.

“Ho! say so, Mary,” said Thomas. “Barbara nor I can’t read, you see, and so we don’t know much about the Great King; and, to say the truth, we never speak of Him, ’cept by chance, when somebody dies or gets killed—for fear we’d make a mistake you know.”

Barbara nodded, to signify her husband was quite right.

“I am sorry to hear that, Thomas,” said mother. “We ought all to think and speak a deal about the Great King, inasmuch as it is in Him we live, move and have our being. This is how the Psalmist says, Thomas:—‘My meditation of Him shall be sweet.’ And in another place he says, ‘Evening and morning and at noon will I pray and cry aloud, and he shall hear my voice.’ And if we were more like the Psalmist, we would be nearer the mark, Thomas bach.”

“Well in-deed, Mary, Barbara and I try to live as near the mark as we can; don’t we, Barbara?”

Barbara gave a confirmatory nod.

“I know that as far as living honestly goes, you are all right enough,” said mother. “But religion teaches us that something more is wanted, before we can enter into the life, Thomas bach.”

“But what can we do more than live honest, Mary? I have a good heart, I’ll take my oath, and Id rather do a kindness than refuse, if it’s in my power, wouldn’t I, Barbara? (Nod.) And I never bear anyone a grudge, do I, Barbara? (Nod.) And as to religion, I see you religious ones worse off nor anybody. Here’s you, Mary Lewis, you have been professin’ since I can remember you, and always talking about religion, the Great King, the other world, and things like that, but who has met with more trouble nor you? One would think you’d had enough trouble with your husband, and here you are again, over head and ears in it. And there’s Bob—one of the tidiest boys that ever wore a Blucher—when he came over to have his boots mended, always speaking of religion, and there he is to-day worse off nor anybody. I told Bob that if religion is a thing of that sort, I can’t un’stand the Great King at all. I’m constantly seein’ you in trouble, with your heads in your feathers.”

“Religion does not promise to keep man from his trials, Thomas,” remarked my mother. ‘And I don’t know but what there may be a little truth in what you say, that religious people are oftener afflicted than others. ‘Thou who hast shown me great and sore troubles,’ says the Psalmist. ‘In the world ye shall have tribulation,’ said the Saviour. And Paul, in the Acts. says that ‘we must, through much tribulation, enter into the kingdom of God.’ The great thing for you and me Thomas, is that these tribulations so sanctify us that we are able to see the hand of the Lord in them all, and that we do not let our spirits sink in too much sorrow.”

“They do tell me, Mary,” said Thomas, “there’s nothin’ better to rise the spirits than—what do they call it? The thing they sell in the druggist’s shop—what’s its name, Barbara?”

“Assiffeta,” replied Barbara.

“To be shwar,” said Thomas, “If you take a penn’orth of ’siffeta, a penn’orth of yellow janders drops, and a penn’orth of tenty rhiwbob, there’s nothing in the world better for risin’ your spirits, they do say. I never tried it myself—’twas a drop of beer I took for my grief after Seth, and it did me a power of good. I could cry very much better after it; and I shouldn’t wonder if it did you good, too, Mary. Barbara wanted to put a drop in her pocket for you, but I told her you wouldn’t take it—you religious folk are so odd in things of that sort.”

“I hope, Thomas,” said mother, “that I have, by this time, got to know a better receipt for raising spirits than anything sold in the druggist’s shop or the public house. To my mind, Thomas, nothing but Gilead balm and Calvary ointment can raise the afflicted spirit.”

“Very true. I hope it isn’t expensive. The same thing ’ont cure everybody, and I always say so, as Barbara knows,” was Thomas’s reply.

“You don’t understand me, Thomas,” said mother. “What I mean is this—the only thing that can raise an afflicted spirit is the sweet and precious promise of the Bible, a knowledge of God in Christ, reconciling the world to Him without taking into account their sins, and a reliance of soul in the dear death on Calvary. I should have been glad had your son’s decease led you and Barbara within sound of the Gospel, and had you sought consolation in its truths instead of trying to drown your sorrows in intoxicating and worthless drink, Thomas bach.”

“Do you know what, Mary?” said Thomas. “If you only belonged to the Ranters, you’d make a champion preacher. But I can’t agree with you about the drink. You know more than me, I’ll allow, but doesn’t the Bible call it strong drink?”

“It does, sure,” replied mother.

“So James Pulford, the tailor, says; and the Bible would never have called it strong drink if it didn’t strengthen a man,” declared Thomas,

“It is so strong that it’ll knock you down, Thomas, if you don’t take great care,” mother observed, adding: “seriously, Thomas bach, isn’t it time that Barbara and you should begin to think about your souls? You are getting old now, and do you never long to come and hear the Gospel? Don’t you think it high time for you both to inquire after that Friend whom you and I will stand in need of before long, if we are not to be wretched for ever. I am making very bold with you, but you know it is your own good I have in view. My dear, good old neighbours, I have thought a deal about you, and tried to pray for you. How good the Great King has been to you! How well, how happy, what a comfort to each other you have been during the years! I Will it not be a great pity, Thomas bach, if you are both left behind at the last. You would like, I know, to see Seth once again, and be with him evermore. Well, there is no doubt in my mind that Seth is safe in the midst of Heaven. ‘The wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err.’ Do you remember what he said to the boy here when dying—that he was ‘going afar, afar, to the great chapel of Jesus Christ.’ And he has gone there, sure to you. But then Seth came to chapel, Thomas; he never missed a service, poor dear! I And although we took no notice of him, and thought he did not understand what was going on, Seth was making his fortune: he found the pearl of great price, which was worth his life to him. There are more pearls in the same field, Thomas; and you, my dear neighbour, must attend the means of grace, or you’ll never go to the same place as Seth.”

These last words had an electrical effect upon Thomas and Barbara. Thomas, overcome with feeling, stared straight into the ash-pit, great tears rolling down his cheeks and dropping upon his spotless cord trousers. Barbara rubbed her nose and eyes with her check apron, and it was with difficulty she restrained a sob when mother spoke of Seth dying. Mother saw the iron was hot, and set about in earnest beating it with that old sledge-hammer of the Scripture in the use of which she was so dexterous. To pursue the metaphor, she turned their hearts this way and that upon her anvil, until I fancied they had neither a side nor an aspect from which she had not struck a living spark. It is not because she was my mother that I say so, nor am I exaggerating when I say it, but I never knew her let an opportunity slip of giving a piece of advice, or a verse from the Bible to those whom she thought without religion, if she saw it would be of advantage so to do. As in the present circumstances, she forgot her own trouble in her eagerness to find some word likely to stick to the heart and conscience of one whom she fancied, to use her own expression, to be “careless about the welfare of his soul.” When I consider how neglectful I myself am in this matter, I am ashamed to remember that I am my mother’s son.

I had seen, for some time, that Thomas was growing very uneasy, and anxious to get away. Mother took the hint. Directly she ceased evangelising, Thomas gave a heavy sigh, and rose nervously to his feet, saying, in a half- choked voice:—

“Barbara, we must go home, look you. What have you got in the basket there?”

Handing the contents to my mother, he said:—

“Champion stuff, Mary. Fed on taters and oatmeal. Never had a single grain. Don’t mention it! Don’t mention it! You’re heartily welcome. Have you any taters in the house? If you send Rhys over to-morrow, I’ll give you a few of the best pink eyes you ever tasted. They eat like flour.”

“Thomas bach,” said mother, taking hold of his coat, “you’ve always been wonderfully kind; but be kind to your soul, now. Will yo J promise me you’ll come to chapel next Sunday? You’ll never repent it.”

Thomas cast his eyes upon the ground, and, after a second or two’s silence, said: “Mary, if all the preachers spoke as plain as you, I’d come to chapel every Sunday. But, to tell the truth to you, I can’t und’stand ’em—they always talk of something, I don’t know what.”

“Will you promise, Thomas bach, to bring Barbara to chapel with you? The light will come, if you only will,” said mother, holding more tightly by the lapel.

“What do you say, Barbara?” asked Thomas.

Barbara having given a nod of assent, Thomas added:—

“Well, name of goodness, we’ll come. Good night, and God be with you.”

After they had left did mother set to admiring the piece of bacon? Not much! She had found a piece of something daintier by a good deal.

“I see it, Rhys! she exclaimed, joyfully. “I see it now! Bob was sent to prison so that Thomas and Barbara Bartley might be saved! ‘His way is in the sea,’” &c.

Well, it was not of Thomas and Barbara Bartley I intended speaking when I began the present chapter, but I see “it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps” in this, as in other things.