“And in thatsleep of death, what dreams may come!”
“And in thatsleep of death, what dreams may come!”
“And in thatsleep of death, what dreams may come!”
says Hamlet—pausing on the brink of eternity, and vainly striving to scan the inscrutable. Trance is an awful counterpart of sleep and death—mysterious in itself, appalling in its hazards. Day after day noise has been hushed in the dormitory—month after month it has seen a human frame grow weaker and weaker, wanner, more deathlike, till the hues of the grave colored the face of the living. And now he lies, motionless, pulseless, breathless. It is not sleep—is it death?
Leigh Hunt is said to have perpetrated a very bad pun connected with the dormitory, and which made Charles Lamb laugh immoderately. Going home together late one night, the latter repeated the well-known proverb, “A home’s a home, however homely.” “Ay,” added Hunt, “and a bed’s a bed, howeverbedly.” It is a strange thing, a bed. Somebody has called it a bundle of paradoxes; wego to it reluctantly, and leave it with regret. Once within the downy precincts of the four posts, how loth we are to make our exodus into the wilderness of life. We are as enamored of our curtained dwelling as if it were the land of Goshen or the cave of Circe. And how many fervent vows have those dumb posts heard broken! every fresh perjury rising to join its cloud of hovering fellows, each morning weighing heavier and heavier on our sluggard eyelids. A caustic proverb says,—we are all “good risers at night;” but woe’s me for our agility in the morning. It is a failing of our species, ever ready to break out in all of us, and in some only vanquished after a struggle painful as the sundering of bone and marrow. The Great Frederic of Prussia found it easier, in after life, to rout the French and Austrians, than in youth to resist the seductions of sleep. After many single-handed attempts at reformation, he had at last to call to his assistance an old domestic, whom he charged, on pain of dismissal, to pull him out of bed every morning at two o’clock. The plan succeeded,as it deserved to succeed. All men of action are impressed with the importance of early rising. “When you begin to turn in bed, its time to turn out,” says the old Duke; and we believe his practice has been in accordance with his precept. Literary men—among whom, as Bulwer says, a certain indolence seems almost constitutional—are not so clear upon this point: they are divided between Night and Morning, though the best authorities seem in favor of the latter. Early rising is the bestelixir vitæ: it is the only lengthener of life that man has ever devised. By its aid the great Buffon was able to spend half a century—an ordinary lifetime—at his desk; and yet had time to be the most modish of all the philosophers who then graced the gay metropolis of France.
Sleep is a treasure and a pleasure; and, as you love it, guard it warily. Over-indulgence is ever suicidal, and destroys the pleasure it means to gratify. The natural times for our lying down and rising up are plain enough. Nature teaches us,and unsophisticated mankind followed her. Singing birds and opening flowers hail the sunrise, and the hush of groves and the closed eyelids of the parterre mark his setting. But “man hath sought out many inventions.” We prolong our days into the depths of night, and our nights into the splendor of day. It is a strange result of civilization! It is not merely occasioned by that thirst for varied amusement which characterizes an advanced stage of society—it is not that theatres, balls, dancing, masquerades, require an artificial light, for all these are or have been equally enjoyed elsewhere beneath the eye of day. What is the cause, we really are not philosopher enough to say; but the prevalence of the habit must have given no little pungency to honest Benjamin Franklin’s joke, when, one summer, he announced to the Parisians as a great discovery—that the sun rose each morning at four o’clock; and that, whereas, they burnt no end of candles by sitting up at night, they might rise in the morning and have light for nothing. Franklin’s “discovery,” we dare say, produced alaugh at the time, and things went on as before. Indeed, so universal is this artificial division of day and night, and so interwoven with it are the social habits, that we shudder at the very idea of returning to the natural order of things. A Robespierre could not carry through so stupendous a revolution. Nothing less than an avatar of Siva the destroyer—Siva with his hundred arms, turning off as many gas-pipes, and replenishing his necklace of human skulls by decapitating the leading conservatives—could have any chance of success; and, ten to one, with our gassy splendors, and seducing glitter, we should convert that pagan devil ere half his work was done.
But of all the inventions which perverse ingenuity has sought out, the most incongruous, the most heretical against both nature and art, is reading in bed. Turning rest into labor, learning into ridicule. A man had better be up. He is spoiling two most excellent things by attempting to join them. Study and sleep—how incongruous! It is an idle coupling of opposites, and shocks a sensibleman as much as if he were to meet in the woods the apparition of a winged elephant. Only fancy an elderly or middle-aged man (for youth is generally orthodox on this point), sitting up in bed, spectacles on his nose, a Kilmarnock on his head, and his flannel jacket round his shivering shoulders,—doing what? Reading? It may be so—but he winks so often, possibly from the glare of the candle, and the glasses now and then slip so far down on his nose, and his hand now and then holds the volume so unsteadily, that if he himself didn’t assure us to the contrary, we should suppose him half asleep. We are sure it must be a great relief to him when the neglected book at last tumbles out of bed to such a distance that he cannot recover it.
Nevertheless, we have heard this extraordinary custom excused on the no less extraordinary ground of its being a soporific. For those who require such things, Marryat gives a much simpler recipe—namely, to mentally repeat any scraps of poetry you can recollect; if your own, so muchthe better. The monks of old, in a similar emergency, used to repeat the seven Penitential Psalms. Either of these plans, we doubt not, will be found equally efficacious, if one is able to use them—if anxiety of mind does not divert him from his task, or the lassitude of illness disable him for attempting it. Sleep, alas! is at times fickle and coy; and, like most sublunary friends, forsakes us when most wanted. Reading in that repertory of many curious things, the “Book of the Farm,” we one day met with the statement that “a pillow of hops will ensure sleep to a patient in a delirious fever when every other expedient fails.” We made a note of it. Heaven forbid that the recipe should ever be needed for us or ours! but the words struck a chord of sympathy in our heart with such poor sufferers, and we saddened with the dread of that awful visitation. The fever of delirium! when incoherent words wander on the lips of genius; when the sufferer stares strangely and vacantly on his ministering friends, or starts with freezing horror from the arms of familiar love! Ah! whata dread tenant has the dormitory then. No food taken for the body, no sleep for the brain! a human being surging with diabolic strength against his keepers—a human frame gifted with superhuman vigor only the more rapidly to destroy itself! Less fearful to the eye, but more harrowing to the soul, is the dormitory whose walls enclose the sleepless victim of Remorse. No poppies or mandragora for him! His malady ends only with the fever of life.Ends?Grief, anxiety, “the thousand several ills that flesh is heir to,” pass away before the lapse of time or the soothings of love, and sleep once more folds its dove-like wings above the couch.
“If there be a regal solitude,” says Charles Lamb, “it is a bed. How the patient lords it there; what caprices he acts without control! How king-like he sways his pillow,—tumbling and tossing, and shifting, and lowering, and thumping, and flatting, and moulding it to the ever-varying requisitions of his throbbing temples. He changessidesoftener than a politician. Now he lies full-length,then half-length, obliquely, transversely, head and feet quite across the bed; and none accuses him of tergiversation. Within the four curtains he is absolute. They are his Mare Clausum. How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man’s self to himself! He is his own exclusive object. Supreme selfishness is inculcated on him as his only duty. ’Tis the two Tables of the Law to him. He has nothing to think of but how to get well. What passes out of doors or within them, so he hear not the jarring of them, affects him not.”
In this climate a sight of the sun is prized; but we love to see it most from bed. A dormitory fronting the east, therefore, so that the early sunbeams may rouse us to the dewy beauties of morning, we love. Let there also be festooned roses without the window, that on opening it the perfume may pervade the realms of bed. Our night-bower should be simple—neat as a fairy’s cell, and ever perfumed with the sweet air of heaven. It is not a place for showy things, or costly. As fire isthe presiding genius in other rooms, so let water, symbol of purity, be in the ascendant here; water, fresh and unturbid as the thoughts that here make their home—water, to wash away the dust and sweat of a weary world. Let nofracasdisturb the quiet of the dormitory. We go there for repose. Our tasks and our cares are left outside, only to be put on again with our hat and shoes in the morning. It is an asylum from the bustle of life—it is the inner shrine of our household gods—and should be respected accordingly. We never entered during the ordinary process of bed-making—pillows tossed here, blankets and sheets pitched hither and thither in wildest confusion, chairs and pitchers in the middle of the floor, feathers and dust everywhere—without a jarring sense that sacrilege was going on, and that thegenius locihad departed. Rude hands were profaning the home of our slumbers!
A sense of security pervades the dormitory. A healthy man in bed is free from everything but dreams, and once in a life-time, or after adjudgingthe Cheese Premium at an Agricultural Show—the nightmare. We once heard a worthy gentleman, blessed with a very large family of daughters, declare he had no peace in his house except in bed. There we feel as if in a city of refuge, secure alike from the brawls of earth and the storms of heaven. Lightning, say old ladies, won’t come through, blankets. Even tigers, says Humboldt, “will not attack a man in his hammock.” Hitting a man when he’s down is stigmatized as villanous all the world over; and lions will rather sit with an empty stomach for hours than touch a man before he awakes. Tricks upon a sleeper! Oh, villanous! Every perpetrator of such unutterable treachery should be put beyond the pale of society. The First of April should have no place in the calendar of the dormitory. We would have the maxim, “Let sleeping dogs lie,” extended to the human race. And an angry dog, certainly, is a man roused needlessly from his slumbers. What an outcry we Northmen raised against the introduction of Greenwich time, which defrauded us of fifteen minutes’sleep in the morning; and how indiscriminate the objurgations lavished upon printers’ devils! Of all sinners against the nocturnal comfort of literary men, these imps are the foremost; and possibly it was from their malpractices in such matters that they first acquired their diabolic cognomen.
The nightcap is not an elegant head-dress, but its comfort is undeniable. It is a diadem of night; and what tranquillity follows our self-coronation! It is priceless as the invisible cap of Fortunatus; and, viewless beneath its folds, our cares cannot find us out. It is graceless. Well; what then? It is not meant for the garish eye of day, nor for the quizzing glass of our fellow-men, or of the ridiculing race of women; neither does it outrage any taste for the beautiful in the happy sleeper himself. We speak as bachelors, to whom the pleasures of a manifold existence are unknown. Possibly the æsthetics of night are not uncared for when a man has another self to please, and when a pair of lovely eyes are fixed admiringly on his upper story; but such is the selfishness of humannature, that we suspect this abnegation of comfort will not long survive the honeymoon. The French, ever enamored of effect, and who, we verily believe, evensleep, “posé,” sometimes substitute the many-colored silken handkerchief for the graceless “bonnet-de-nuit.” But all such substitutes are less comfortable and more troublesome; and of all irritating things, the most irritable is a complex operation in undressing. Æsthetics at night, and for the weary! No, no. The weary man frets at every extra button or superfluous knot, he counts impatiently every second that keeps him from his couch, and flies to the arms of sleep as to those of his mistress. Nevertheless, French novelette writers make a great outcry against nightcaps. We remember an instance. A husband—rather good-looking fellow—suspects that his wife is beginning to have too tender thoughts towards a glossy-ringletted Lothario who is then staying with them. So, having accidentally discovered that Lothario slept in a huge peeked nightcowl, and knowing that ridicule would prove the most effectual disenchanter,he fastened a string to his guest’s bell, and passed it into his own room.
At the dead of night, when all were fast asleep, suddenly Lothario’s bell rang furiously. Upstarted the lady—“their guest must be ill;”—and, accompanied by her husband, elegantly coiffed in a turbaned silk handkerchief, she entered the room whence the alarum had sounded. They find Lothario sitting up in bed—his cowl rising pyramid-fashion, a fool’s cap all but the bells—bewildered and in ludicrous consternation at being surprised thus by the fair Angelica; and, unable to conceal his chagrin, he completes his discomfiture by bursting out in wrathful abuse of his laughing host for so betraying his weakness for nightcaps.
The Poetry of the Dormitory! It is an inviting but too delicate a subject for our rough hands. Do not the very words call up a vision? By the light of the stars we see a lovely head resting on a downy pillow; the bloom of the rose is on that young cheek, and the half-parted lips murmur as in a dream: “Edward!” Love is lying light ather heart, and its fairy wand is showing her visions. May her dreams be happy! “Edward!” Was it a sigh that followed that gentle invocation? What would the youth give to hear that murmur,—to gaze like yonder stars on his slumbering love. Hush! are the morning-stars singing together—a lullaby to soothe the dreamer? A low dulcet strain floats in through the window; and soon, mingling with the breathings of the lute, the voice of youth. The harmony penetrates through the slumbering senses to the dreamer’s heart; and ere the golden curls are lifted from the pillow, she is conscious of all. The serenade begins anew. What does she hear?
“Stars of the summer night!Far in yon azure deeps,Hide, hide your golden light!She sleeps!My lady sleeps!Sleeps!Dreams of the summer night!Tell her her lover keepsWatch! while in slumbers lightShe sleepsMy lady sleeps!Sleeps!”
“Stars of the summer night!Far in yon azure deeps,Hide, hide your golden light!She sleeps!My lady sleeps!Sleeps!Dreams of the summer night!Tell her her lover keepsWatch! while in slumbers lightShe sleepsMy lady sleeps!Sleeps!”
“Stars of the summer night!Far in yon azure deeps,Hide, hide your golden light!She sleeps!My lady sleeps!Sleeps!
Dreams of the summer night!Tell her her lover keepsWatch! while in slumbers lightShe sleepsMy lady sleeps!Sleeps!”
“HOW pleased the boy looks, to be sure!” observed Woodruffe to his wife, as his son Allan caught up little Moss (as Maurice had chosen to call himself before he could speak plain) and made him jump from the top of the drawers upon the chair, and then from the chair to the ground. “He is making all that racket just because he is so pleased he does not know what to do with himself.”
“I suppose he will forgive Fleming now for carrying off Abby,” said the mother. “I say, Allan, what do you think now of Abby marrying away from us?”
“Why, I think it’s a very good thing. You know she never told me that we should go and live where she lived, and in such a pretty place, too, where I may have a garden of my own, and see what I can make of it—all fresh from the beginning, as father says.”
“You are to try your hand at the business, I know,” replied the mother, “but I never heard your father, nor any one else, say that the place was a pretty one. I did not think new railway stations had been pretty places at all.”
“It sounds so to him, naturally,” interposed Woodruffe. “He hears of a south aspect, and a slope to the north for shelter, and the town seen far off; and that sounds all very pleasant. And then, there is the thought of the journey, and the change, and the fun of getting the ground all into nice order, and, best of all, the seeing his sister so soon again. Youth is the time for hope and joy, you know, love.”
And Woodruffe began to whistle, and stepped forward to take his turn at jumping Moss, whomhe carried in one flight from the top of the drawers to the floor. Mrs. Woodruffe smiled, as she thought that youth was not the only season, with some people, for hope and joy.
Her husband, always disposed to look on the bright side, was particularly happy this evening. The lease of his market-garden ground was just expiring. He had prospered on it; and would have desired nothing better than to live by it as long as he lived at all. He desired this so much that he would not believe a word of what people had been saying for two years past, that his ground would be wanted by his landlord on the expiration of the lease, and that it would not be let again. His wife had long foreseen this; but not till the last moment would he do what she thought should have been done long before—offer to buy the ground. At the ordinary price of land, he could accomplish the purchase of it; but when he found his landlord unwilling to sell, he bid higher and higher, till his wife was so alarmed at the rashness, that she was glad when a prospect of entire removalopened. Woodruffe was sure that he could have paid off all he offered at the end of a few years; but his partner thought it would have been a heavy burden on their minds, and a sad waste of money; and she was therefore, in her heart, obliged to the landlord for persisting in his refusal to sell.
When that was settled, Woodruffe became suddenly sure that he could pick up an acre or two of land somewhere not far off. But he was mistaken; and, if he had not been mistaken, market-gardening was no longer the profitable business it had been, when it enabled him to lay by something every year. By the opening of a railway, the townspeople, a few miles off, got themselves better supplied with vegetables from another quarter. It was this which put it into the son-in-law’s head to propose the removal of the family into Staffordshire, where he held a small appointment on a railway. Land might be had at a low rent near the little country station where his business lay; and the railway brought within twenty minutes’ distancea town where there must be a considerable demand for garden produce. The place was in a raw state at present; and there were so few houses, that, if there had been a choice of time, the Flemings would rather have put off the coming of the family till some of the cottages already planned had been built; but the Woodruffes must remove in September, and all parties agreed that they should not mind a little crowding for a few months. Fleming’s cottage was to hold them all till some chance of more accommodation should offer.
“I’ll tell you what,” said Woodruffe, after standing for some time, half whistling and thinking, with that expression on his face which his wife had long learned to be afraid of, “I’ll write to-morrow—let’s see—I may as well do it to-night;” and he looked round for paper and ink. “I’ll write to Fleming, and get him to buy the land for me at once.”
“Before you see it?” said his wife, looking up from her stocking mending.
“Yes. I know all about it, as much as if I were standing on it this moment; and I am sick of this work—of being turned out just when I had made the most of a place, and got attached to it. I’ll make a sure thing of it this time, and not have such a pull at my heart-strings again. And the land will be cheaper now than later; and we shall go to work upon it with such heart, if it is our own! Eh?”
“Certainly, if we find, after seeing it, that we like it as well as we expect. I would just wait till then.”
“As well as we expect! Why, bless my soul! don’t we know all about it? It is not any land-agent or interested person, that has described it to us; but our own daughter and her husband; and do not they know what we want? The quantity at my own choice; the aspect capital; plenty of water (only too much, indeed); the soil anything but poor, and sand and marl within reach to reduce the stiffness; and manure at command, all along the railway, from half-a-dozen towns; andosier-beds at hand (within my own bounds if I like) giving all manner of convenience for fencing, and binding, and covering! Why, what would you have?”
“It sounds very pleasant, certainly.”
“Then, how can you make objections? I can’t think where you look, to find any objections?”
“I see none now, and I only want to be sure that we shall find none when we arrive.”
“Well! I do call that unreasonable! To expect to find any place on earth altogether unobjectionable! I wonder what objection could be so great as being turned out of one after another, just as we have got them into order. Here comes our girl. Well, Becky, I see how you like the news! Now, would not you like it better still if we were going to a place of our own, where we should not be under any landlord’s whims? We should have to work, you know, one and all. But we would get the land properly manured, and have a cottage of our own in time; would not we? Will you undertake the pigs, Becky?”
“Yes, father; and there are many things I can do in the garden too. I am old and strong, now; and I can do much more than I have ever done here.”
“Aye; if the land was our own,” said Woodruffe, with a glance at his wife. She said no more, but was presently up stairs putting Moss to bed. She knew, from long experience, how matters would go. After a restless night, Woodruffe spoke no more of buying the land without seeing it; and he twice said, in a meditative, rather than a communicative way, that he believed it would take as much capital as he had to remove his family, and get his new land into fit condition for spring crops.
“You may look out now for the place. Look out for our new garden. We are just there now,” said Woodruffe to the children as the whistle sounded, and the train was approaching the station. It had been a glorious autumn day from thebeginning; and for the last hour, while the beauty of the light on fields and trees and water had been growing more striking, the children, tired with the novelty of all that they had seen since morning, had been dropping asleep. They roused up suddenly enough at the news that they were reaching their new home; and thrust their heads to the windows, eagerly asking on which side they were to look for their garden. It was on the south, the left-hand side; but it might have been anywhere, for what they could see of it. Below the embankment was something like a sheet of gray water, spreading far away.
“It is going to be a foggy night,” observed Woodruffe. The children looked into the air for the fog, which had always, in their experience, arrived by that way from the sea. The sky was all a clear blue, except where a pale green and a faint blush of pink streaked the west. A large planet beamed clear and bright; and the air was so transparent that the very leaves on the trees might almost be counted. Yet could nothing beseen below for the gray mist which was rising, from moment to moment.
Fleming met them as they alighted; but he could not stay till he had seen to the other passengers. His wife was there. She had been a merry-hearted girl; and now, still so young, as to look as girlish as ever, she seemed even merrier than ever. She did not look strong, but she had hardly thrown off what she called “a little touch of the ague;” and she declared herself perfectly well when the wind was anywhere but in the wrong quarter. Allan wondered how the wind could go wrong. He had never heard of such a thing before. He had known the wind too high, when it did mischief among his father’s fruit trees; but it had never occurred to him that it was not free to come and go whence and whither it would, without blame or objection.
“Come—come home,” exclaimed Mrs. Fleming, “Never mind about your bags and boxes! My husband will take care of them. Let me show you the way home.”
She let go the hands of the young brothers, and loaded them, and then herself, with parcels, that they might not think they were going to lose everything, as she said; and then tripped on before to show the way. The way was down steps, from the highest of which two or three chimney-tops might be seen piercing the mist which hid everything else. Down, down, down went the party, by so many steps that little Moss began to totter under his bundle.
“How low this place lies!” observed the mother.
“Why, yes;” replied Mrs. Fleming. “And yet I don’t know. I believe it is rather that the railway runs high.”
“Yes, yes; that is it,” said Woodruffe. “What an embankment this is! If this is to shelter my garden to the north—”
“Yes, yes, it is. I knew you would like it,” exclaimed Mrs. Fleming. “I said you would be delighted. I only wish you could see your ground at once; but it seems rather foggy, and I suppose we must wait till the morning. Here we are at home.”
The travellers were rather surprised to see how very small a house this “home” was. Though called a cottage, it had not the look of one. It was of a red brick, dingy, though evidently new; and, to all appearance, it consisted of merely a room below, and one above. On walking round it, however, a sloping roof in two directions gave a hint of further accommodation.
When the whole party had entered, and Mrs. Fleming had kissed them all round, her glance at her mother asked, as plainly as any words, “Is not this a pleasant room?”
“A pretty room, indeed, my dear,” was the mother’s reply, “and as nicely furnished as one could wish.”
She did not say anything of the rust which her quick eye perceived on the fire-irons and the door-key, or of the damp which stained the walls just above the skirting-board. There was nothing amiss with the ceiling, or the higher parts of the wall,—so it might be an accident.
“But, my dear,” asked the mother, seeing howsleepy Moss looked, “Where are you going to put us all? If we crowd you out of all comfort, I shall be sorry we came so soon.”
As Mrs. Fleming led the way upstairs, she reminded her family of their agreement not to mind a little crowding for a time. If her mother thought there was not room for all the newly arrived in this chamber, they could fit out a corner for Allan in the place where she and her husband were to sleep.
“All of us in this room?” exclaimed Becky.
“Yes, Becky; why not? Here, you see, is a curtain between your bed and the large one; and your bed is large enough to let little Moss sleep with you. And here is a morsel of a bed for Allan in the other corner; and I have another curtain ready to shut it in.”
“But,” said Becky, who was going on to object. Her mother stopped her by a sign.
“Or,” continued Mrs. Fleming, “if you like to let Allan and his bed and curtain come down to our place, you will have plenty of room here;much more than my neighbors have, for the most part. How it will be when the new cottages are built, I don’t know. We think them too small for new houses; but, meantime, there are the Brookes sleeping seven in a room no bigger than this, and the Vines six in one much smaller.”
“How do they manage, now?” asked the mother. “In case of illness, say; and how do they wash and dress?”
“Ah! that is the worst part of it. I don’t think the boys wash themselves—what we should call washing—for weeks together; or at least only on Saturday nights. So they slip their clothes on in two minutes; and then their mother and sisters can get up. But there is the pump below for Allan, and he can wash as much as he pleases.”
It was not till the next day that Mrs. Woodruffe knew—and then it was Allan who told her—that the pump was actually in the very place where the Flemings slept,—close by their bed. The Flemings were, in truth, sleeping in an outhouse, where the floor was of brick, the swill-tub stood in onecorner, the coals were heaped in another, and the light came in from a square hole high up, which had never till now been glazed. Plenty of air rushed in under the door, and yet some more between the tiles,—there being no plaster beneath them. As soon as Mrs. Woodruffe had been informed of this, and had stepped in, while her daughter’s back was turned, to make her own observations, she went out by herself for a walk,—so long a walk, that it was several hours before she reappeared, heated and somewhat depressed. She had roamed the country round, in search of lodgings; and finding none,—finding no occupier who really could possibly spare a room on any terms,—she had returned convinced that, serious as the expense would be, she and her family ought to settle themselves in the nearest town,—her husband going to his business daily by the third-class train, till a dwelling could be provided for them on the spot.
When she returned, the children were on the watch for her; and little Moss had strong hopesthat she would not know him. He had a great cap of rushes on his head, with a heavy bulrush for a feather; he was stuck all over with water-flags and bulrushes, and carried a long osier wand, wherewith to flog all those who did not admire him enough in his new style of dress. The children were clamorous for their mother to come down, and see the nice places where they got these new playthings; and she would have gone, but that their father came up, and decreed it otherwise. She was heated and tired, he said; and he would not have her go till she was easy and comfortable enough to see things in the best light.
Her impression was that her husband was, more or less (and she did not know why), disappointed; but he did not say so. He would not hear of going off to the town, being sure that some place would turn up soon,—some place where they might put their heads at night; and the Flemings should be no losers by having their company by day. Their boarding all together, if the sleeping could but be managed, would be a help to theyoung people,—a help which it was pleasant to him, as a father, to be able to give them. He said nothing about the land that was not in praise of it. Its quality was excellent; or would be when it had good treatment. It would take some time and trouble to get it in order,—so much that it would never do to live at a distance from it. Besides, no trains that would suit him ran at the proper hours; so there was an end of it. They must all rough it a little for a time, and expect their reward afterwards.
There was nothing that Woodruffe was so hard to please in as the time when he should take his wife to see the ground. It was close at hand; yet he hindered her going in the morning, and again after their early dinner. He was anxious that she should not be prejudiced, or take a dislike at first; and in the morning, the fog was so thick that everything looked dank and dreary; and in the middle of the day, when a warm autumn sun had dissolved the mists, there certainly was a most disagreeable smell hanging about. It was not goneat sunset; but by that time Mrs. Woodruffe was impatient, and she appeared—Allan showing her the way—just when her husband was scraping his feet upon his spade, after a hard day of digging.
“There, now!” said he, good-humoredly, striking his spade into the ground, “Fleming said you would be down before we were ready for you; and here you are!—Yes, ready for you. There are some planks coming, to keep your feet out of the wet among all this clay.”
“And yours, too, I hope,” said the wife. “I don’t mind such wet, after rain, as you have been accustomed to; but to stand in a puddle like this is a very different thing.”
“Yes—so ’tis. But we’ll have the planks; and they will serve for running the wheelbarrow, too. It is too much for Allan, or any boy, to run the barrow in such a soil as this. We’ll have the planks first; and then we’ll drain, and drain, and get rare spring crops.”
“What have they given you this artificial pond for,” asked the wife, “if you must drain so much?”
“That is no pond. All the way along here, on both sides the railway, there is the mischief of these pits. They dig out the clay for bricks, and then leave the places—pits like this, some of them six feet deep. The railways have done a deal of good for the poor man, and will do a great deal more yet; but, at present, this one has left those pits.”
“I hope Moss will not fall into one. They are very dangerous,” declared the mother, looking about for the child.
“He is safe enough there, among the osiers,” said the father. “He has lost his heart outright to the osiers. However, I mean to drain and fill up this pit, when I find a good out-fall; and then we will have all high and dry, and safe for the children. I don’t care so much for the pit as for the ditches there. Don’t you notice the bad smell?”
“Yes, indeed, that struck me the first night.”
“I have been inquiring to-day, and I find there is one acre in twenty hereabouts occupied with foul ditches like that. And then the overflowfrom them and the pits, spoils many an acre more. There is a stretch of water-flags and bulrushes, and nasty coarse grass and rushes, nothing but a swamp, where the ground is naturally as good as this; and, look here! Fleming was rather out, I tell him, when he wrote that I might graze a pony on the pasture below, whenever I have a market-cart. I ask him if he expects me to water it here.”
So saying, Woodruffe led the way to one of the ditches which, instead of fences, bounded his land; and, moving the mass of weed with a stick, showed the water beneath, covered with a whitish bubbling scum, the smell of which was insufferable.
“There is plenty of manure there,” said Woodruffe; “that is the only thing that can be said for it. We’ll make manure of it, and sweep out the ditch, and deepen it, and narrow it, and not use up so many feet of good ground for a ditch that does nothing but poison us. A fence is better than a ditch any day. I’ll have a fence, and still save ten feet of ground, the whole way down.”
“There is a great deal to do here,” observed the wife.
“And good reward when it is done,” Woodruffe replied. “If I can fall in with a stout laborer, he and Allan and I can get our spring crops prepared for; and I expect they will prove the goodness of the soil. There is Fleming. Supper is ready, I suppose.”
The children were called, but both were so wet and dirty that it took twice as long as usual to make them fit to sit at table; and apologies were made for keeping supper waiting. The grave half-hour before Moss’s bed-time was occupied with the most solemn piece of instruction he had ever had in his life. His father carried him up to the railway, and made him understand the danger of playing there. He was never to play there. His father would go up with him once a day, and let him see a train pass; and this was the only time he was ever to mount the steps, except by express leave. Moss was put to bed in silence, with his father’s deep, grave voice, sounding in his ears.
“He will not forget it,” declared his father. “He will give us no trouble about the railway. The next thing is the pit. Allan, I expect you to see that he does not fall into the pit. In time, we shall teach him to take care of himself; but you must remember, meanwhile, that the pit is six feet deep—deeper than I am high; and that the edge is the same clay that you slipped on so often this morning.”
“Yes, father,” said Allan, looking as grave as if power of life and death were in his hands.
One fine morning in the next spring, there was more stir and cheerfulness about the Woodruffes’ dwelling than there had been of late. The winter had been somewhat dreary; and now the spring was anxious; for Woodruffe’s business was not, as yet, doing very well. His hope, when he bought hispony and cart, was to dispatch by railway to the town the best of his produce, and sell the commoner part in the country neighborhood, sending his cart round within the reach of a few miles. As it turned out, he had nothing yet to send to the town, and his agent there was vexed and displeased. No radishes, onions, early salads, or rhubarb were ready, and it would be some time yet before they were.
“I am sure I have done everything I could,” said Woodruffe to Fleming, as they both lent a hand to put the pony into the cart. “Nobody can say that I have not made drains enough, or that they are not deep enough; yet the frost has taken such a hold that one would think we were living in the north of Scotland, instead of in Staffordshire.”
“It has not been a severe season either,” observed Fleming.
“There’s the vexation,” replied Woodruffe. “If it had been a season which set us at defiance, and made all sufferers alike, one must just submit to aloss, and go on again, like one’s neighbors. But, you see, I am cut out, as my agent says, from the market. Everybody else has spring vegetables there, as usual. It is no use telling him that I never failed before. But I know what it is. It is yonder great ditch that does the mischief.”
“Why, we have nothing to do with that.”
“That is the very reason. If it was mine or yours, do you think I should not have taken it in hand long ago? All my draining goes for little while that shallow ditch keeps my ground a continual sop. It is all uneven along the bottom;—not the same depth for three feet together anywhere, and not deep enough by two feet in any part. So there it is, choked up and putrid; and, after an hour or two of rain, my garden gets such a soaking that the next frost is destruction.”
“I will speak about it again,” said Fleming. “We must have it set right before next winter.”
“I think we have seen enough of the uselessness of speaking,” replied Woodruffe, gloomily. “Ifwe tease the gentry any more, they may punish you for it. I would show them my mind by being off,—throwing up my bargain at all costs, if I had not put so much into the ground that I have nothing left to move away with.”
“Don’t be afraid for me,” said Fleming, cheerfully. “It was chiefly my doing that you came here, and I must try my utmost to obtain fair conditions for you. We must remember that the benefit of your outlay has all to come.”
“Yes; I can’t say we have got much of it yet.”
“By next winter,” continued Fleming, “your privet hedges and screens will have grown up into some use against the frost; and your own drainage——. Come, come, Allan, my boy! be off! It is getting late.”
Allan seemed to be idling, re-arranging his bunches of small radishes, and little bundles of rhubarb, in their clean baskets, and improving the stick with which he was to drive; but he pleaded that he was waiting for Moss, and for the parcel which his mother was getting ready for Becky.
“Ah I my poor little girl!” said Woodruffe. “Give my love to her, and tell her it will be a happy day when we can send for her to come home again. Be sure you observe particularly, to tell us how she looks; and, mind, if she fancies anything in the cart,—any radishes, or whatever else, because it comes out of our garden, be sure you give it her. I wish I was going myself with the cart, for the sake of seeing Becky; but I must go to work. Here have I been all the while, waiting to see you off. Ah! here they come! you may always have notice now of who is coming by that child’s crying.”
“O, father! not always!” exclaimed Allan.
“Far too often, I’m sure. I never knew a child grow so fractious. I am saying, my dear,” to his wife, who now appeared with her parcel, and Moss in his best hat, “that boy is the most fractious child we ever had; and he is getting too old for that to begin now. How can you spoil him so?”
“I am not aware,” said Mrs. Woodruffe, her eyes filling with tears, “that I treat him differentlyfrom the rest; but the child is not well. His chilblains tease him terribly, and I wish there may be nothing worse.”
“Warm weather will soon cure the chilblains, and then I hope we shall see an end of the fretting.—Now, leave off crying this minute, Moss, or you don’t go. You don’t see me cry with my rheumatism, and that is worse than chilblains, I can tell you.”
Moss tried to stifle his sobs, while his mother put more straw into the cart for him, and cautioned Allan to be careful of him, for it really seemed as if the child was tender all over. Allan seemed to succeed best as comforter. He gave Moss the stick to wield, and showed him how to make believe to whip the pony, so that before they turned the corner, Moss was wholly engrossed with what he called driving.
“Yes, yes,” said Woodruffe, as he turned away to go to the garden, “Allan is the one to manage, him. He can take as good care of him as any woman without spoiling him!”
Mrs. Woodruffe submitted to this in silence; but with the feeling that she did not deserve it.
Becky had had no notice of this visit from her brothers; but no such visit could take her by surprise; for she was thinking of her family all day long, every day, and fancying she should see them whichever way she turned. It was not her natural destination to be a servant in a farm-house; she had never expected it,—never been prepared for it. She was as willing to work as any girl could be; and her help in the gardening was beyond what most women are capable of; but it was a bitter thing to her to go among strangers, and toil for them, when she knew that she was wanted at home by father and mother, and brothers, and just at present by her sister too; for Mrs. Fleming’s confinement was to happen this spring. The reason why Becky was not at home while so much wanted there was, that there really was no accommodation for her. The plan of sleeping all huddled together as they were at first would not do. The girl herself could not endure it; and her parents felt thatshe must be got out at any sacrifice. They had inquired diligently till they found a place for her in a farm-house, where the good wife promised protection, and care, and kindness; and fulfilled her promise to the best of her power.
“I hope they do well by you here, Becky,” asked Allan, when the surprise caused by his driving up with a dash had subsided, and everybody had retired, to leave Becky with her brothers for the few minutes they could stay. “I hope they are kind to you here.”
“O, yes,—very kind. And I am sure you ought to say so to father and mother.”
Becky had jumped into the cart, and had her arms round Moss, and her head on his shoulder. Raising her head, and with her eyes filling as she spoke, she inquired anxiously how the new cottages went on, and when father and mother were to have a home of their own again. She owned, but did not wish her father and mother to hear of it, that she did not like being among such rough people as the farm servants. She did not likesome of the behavior that she saw; and, still less, such talk as she was obliged to overhear. Whenwoulda cottage be ready for them?
“Why, the new cottages would soon be getting on now,” Allan said; but he didn’t know, nobody fancied the look of them. He saw them just after the foundations were laid; and the enclosed parts were like a clay-puddle. He did not see how they were ever to be improved; for the curse of wet seemed to be on them, as upon everything about the Station. Fleming’s cottage was the best he had seen, after all, if only it was twice as large. If anything could be done to make the new cottages what cottages should be, it would be done: for everybody agreed that the railway gentlemen desired to do the best for their people, and to set an example in that respect; but it was beyond anybody’s power to make wet clay as healthy as warm gravel. Unless they could go to work first to dry the soil, it seemed a hopeless sort of affair.
“But, I say, Becky,” pursued Allan, “youknow about my garden—that father gave me a garden of my own.”
Becky’s head was turned quite away; and she did not look round, when she replied,
“Yes; I remember. How does your garden get on?”
There was something in her voice which made her brother lean over and look into her face; and, as he expected, tears were running down her cheeks.
“There now!” said he, whipping the back of the cart with his stick; “something must be done, if you can’t get on here.”
“O! I can get on. Be sure you don’t tell mother that I can’t get on, or anything about it.”
“You look healthy, to be sure.”
“To be sure I am. Don’t say any more about it. Tell me about your garden.”
“Well: I am trying what I can make of it, after I have done working with father. But it takes a long time to bring it round.”
“What! is the wet there, too?”
“Lord, yes! The wet was beyond everything at first. I could not leave the spade in the ground ten minutes, if father called me, but the water was standing in the hole when I went back again. It is not so bad now, since I made a drain to join upon father’s principal one; and father gave me some sand, and plenty of manure; but it seems to us that manure does little good. It won’t sink in when the ground is so wet.”
“Well, there will be the summer next, and that will dry up your garden.”
“Yes. People say the smells are dreadful in hot weather, though. But we seem to get used to that. I thought it sickly work, just after we came, going down to get osiers, and digging near the big ditch that is our plague now: but somehow, it does not strike me now as it did then, though Fleming says it is getting worse every warm day. But come—I must be off. What will you help yourself to? And don’t forget your parcel.”
Becky’s great anxiety was to know when her brothers would come again. O! very often, shewas assured—oftener and oftener as the vegetables came forward; whenever there were either too many or too few to send to the town by rail.
After Becky had jumped down, the farmer and one of the men were seen to be contemplating the pony.
“What have you been giving your pony lately?” asked the farmer of Allan. “I ask as a friend, having some experience of this part of the country. Have you been letting him graze?”
“Yes, in the bit of meadow that we have leave for. There is a good deal of grass there, now. He has been grazing there these three weeks.”
“On the meadow where the osier beds are? Ay! I knew it by the look of him. Tell your father that if he does not take care, his pony will have the staggers in no time. An acquaintance of mine grazed some cattle there once; and in a week or two, they were all feverish, so that the butcher refused them on any terms; and I have seen more than one horse in the staggers, after grazing in marshes of that sort.”
“There is fine thick grass there, and plenty of it,” said Allan, who did not like that anybody but themselves should criticise their new place and plans.
“Ay, ay; I know,” replied the farmer. “But if you try to make hay of that grass, you’ll be surprised to find how long it takes to make, and how like wool it comes out at last. It is a coarse grass, with no strength in it; and it must be a stronger beast than this that will bear feeding on it. Just do you tell your father what I say, that’s all; and then he can do as he pleases; but I would take a different way with that pony, without loss of time, if it was mine.”
Allan did not much like taking this sort of message to his father, who was not altogether so easy to please as he used to be. If anything vexed him ever so little, he always began to complain of his rheumatism—and he now complained of his rheumatism many times in a day. It was managed, however, by tacking a little piece of amusement and pride upon it. Moss was taught, all the wayas they went home, after selling their vegetables, how much everything sold for; and he was to deliver the money to his father, and go through his lesson as gravely as any big man. It succeeded very well. Everybody laughed. Woodruffe called the child his little man-of-business; gave him a penny out of the money he brought; and when he found that the child did not like jumping as he used to do, carried him up to the railway to listen for the whistle, and see the afternoon train come up, and stop a minute, and go on again.
Fleming did what he could to find fair play for his father-in-law. He spoke to one and another—to the officers of the railway, and to the owners of neighboring plots of ground, about the bad drainage, which was injuring everybody; but he could not learn that anything was likely to be done.The ditch—the great evil of all—had always been there, he was told, and people never used to complain of it. When Fleming pointed out that it was at first a comparatively deep ditch, and that it grew shallower every year from the accumulations formed by its uneven bottom, there were some who admitted that it might be as well to clean it out; yet nobody set about it. And it was truly a more difficult affair now than it would have been at an earlier time. If the ditch was shallower, it was much wider. It had once been twelve feet wide, and it was now eighteen. When any drain had been flowing into it, or after a rainy day, the contents spread through and over the soil on each side, and softened it, and then the next time any horse or cow came to drink, the whole bank was made a perfect bog; for the poor animals, however thirsty, tried twenty places to find water that they could drink before going away in despair. Such was the bar in the way of poor Woodruffe’s success with his ground. Before the end of summer his patience was nearly worn out. During a showeryand gleamy May and a pleasant June, he had gone on as prosperously as he could expect under the circumstances; and he confidently anticipated that a seasonable July and August would set him up. But he had had no previous experience of the peculiarities of ill-drained land; and the hot July and August, from which he hoped so much, did him terrible mischief. The drought which would have merely dried and pulverized a well-drained soil, leaving it free to profit much by small waterings, baked the overcharged soil of Woodruffe’s garden into hard hot masses of clay, amidst which his produce died off faster and faster every day, even though he and all his family wore out their strength with constant watering. He did hope, he said, that he should have been spared drought at least; but it seemed as if he was to have every plague in turn; and the drought seemed, at the time, to be the worst of all.
One day Fleming saw a welcome face in one of the carriages; Mr. Nelson, a director of the railway, who was looking along the line to see howmatters went. Though Mr. Nelson was not exactly the one, of all the directors, whom Fleming would have chosen to appeal to, he saw that the opportunity must not be lost; and he entreated him to alight, and stay for the next train.
“Eh! what!” said Mr. Nelson; “what can you want with us here? A station like this! Why, one has to put on spectacles to see it!”
“If you would come down, sir, I should be glad to show you....”
“Well; I suppose I must.”
As they were standing on the little platform, and the train was growing smaller in the distance, Fleming proceeded to business. He told of the serious complaints that were made for a distance of a few miles on either hand, of the clay pits left by the railway brickmakers, to fill with stagnant waters.
“Pho! pho! Is that what you want to say?” replied Mr. Nelson. “You need not have stopped me just to tell me that. We hear of those pits all along the line. We are sick of hearing of them.”
“That does not mend the matter in this place,” observed Fleming. “I speak freely, sir, but I think it my duty to say that something must be done. I heard a few days ago, more than the people hereabouts know,—much more than I shall tell them—of the fever that has settled on particular points of our line; and I now assure you, sir, that if the fever once gets a hold in this place, I believe it may carry us all off before anything can be done. Sir, there is not one of us within half a mile of the station that has a wholesome dwelling.”
“Pho! pho! you are a croaker,” declared Mr. Nelson. “Never saw such a dismal fellow! Why, you will die of fright, if ever you die of anything.”
“Then, sir, will you have the goodness to walk round with me, and see for yourself what you think of things. It is not only for myself and my family that I speak. In an evil day I induced my wife’s family to settle here, and....”
“Ay! that is a nice garden,” observed Mr. Nelson, as Fleming pointed to Woodruffe’s land. “You are a croaker, Fleming. I declare I think the place is much improved since I saw it last. People would not come and settle here if the place was like what you say.”
Instead of arguing the matter, Fleming led the way down the long flight of steps. He was aware that leading the gentleman among bad smells and over shoes in a foul bog would have more effect than any argument was ever known to have on his contradictious spirit.
“You should have seen worse things than these, and then you would not be so discontented,” observed Mr. Nelson, striking his stick upon the hard-baked soil, all intersected with cracks. “I have seen such a soil as this in Spain, some days after a battle, when there were scores of fingers and toes sticking up out of the cracks. What would you say to that?—eh?”
“We may have a chance of seeing that here,” replied Fleming; “if the plague comes, and comes too fast for the coffin-makers,—a thing which hashappened more than once in England, I believe.”
Mr. Nelson stopped to laugh; but he certainly attended more to business as he went on; and Fleming, who knew something of his ways, had hopes that if he could only keep his own temper, this visit of the director might not be without good results.
In passing through Woodruffe’s garden, very nice management was necessary. Woodruffe was at work there, charged with ire against railway directors and landed proprietors, whom, amidst the pangs of his rheumatism, he regarded as the poisoners of his land and the bane of his fortunes; while, on the other hand, Mr. Nelson, who had certainly never been a market gardener, criticized and ridiculed everything that met his eye. What was the use of such a tool-house as that?—big enough for a house for them all. What was the use of such low fences?—of such high screens?—of making the walks so wide?—sheer waste?—of making the beds so long one way, and so narrow another?—ofplanting or sowing this and that?—things that nobody wanted. Woodruffe had pushed back his hat in preparation for a defiant reply, when Fleming caught his eye, and, by a good-tempered smile, conveyed to him that they had an oddity to deal with. Allan, who had begun by listening reverently, was now looking from one to another in great perplexity.
“What is that boy here for, staring like a dunce? Why don’t you send him to school? You neglect a parent’s duty if you don’t send him to school.”
Woodruffe answered by a smile of contempt, walked away, and went to work at a distance.
“That boy is very well taught,” Fleming said, quietly. “He is a great reader, and will soon be fit to keep his father’s accounts.”
“What does he stare in that manner for, then? I took him for a dunce.”
“He is not accustomed to hear his father called in question, either as a gardener or a parent.”
“Pho! pho! I might as well have waited,though, till he was out of hearing. Well, is this all you have to show me? I think you make a great fuss about nothing.”
“Will you walk this way?” said Fleming, turning down towards the osier beds, without any compassion for the gentleman’s boots or olfactory nerves. For a long while Mr. Nelson affected to admire the reed, and water-flags, and marsh-blossoms, declared the decayed vegetation to be peat soil, very fine peat, which the ladies would be glad of for their heaths in the flower-garden,—and thought there must be good fowling here in winter. Fleming quietly turned over the so-called peat with a stick, letting it be seen that it was a mere dung-heap of decayed rushes, and wished Mr. Nelson would come in the fowling season, and see what the place was like.
“The children are merry enough, however,” observed the gentleman. “They can laugh here, much as in other places. I advise you to take a lesson from them, Fleming. Now, don’t you teach them to croak.”
The laughter sounded from the direction of the old brick-ground; and thither they now turned. Two little boys were on the brink of a pit, so intent on watching a rat in the water and on pelting it with stones, that they did not see that anybody was coming to disturb them. In answer to Mr. Nelson’s question, whether they were vagrants, and why vagrants were permitted there, Fleming answered that the younger one—the pale-faced one—was his little brother-in-law; the other—
“Ay, now, you will be telling me next that the pale face is the fault of this place.”
“It certainly is,” said Fleming. “That child was chubby enough when he came.”
“Pho, pho! a puny little wretch as ever I saw—puny from its birth, I have no doubt of it. And who is the other—a gypsy?”
“He looks like it,” replied Fleming. On being questioned, Moss told that the boy lived near, and he had often played with him lately. Yes, he lived near, just beyond those trees; not in a house, only a sort of house the people had made for themselves.Mr. Nelson liked to lecture vagrants, even more than other people; so Moss was required to show the way, and his dark-skinned playfellow was not allowed to skulk behind.
Moss led his party on, over the tufty hay-colored grass, skipping from bunch to bunch of rushes, round the osier-beds, and at last straight through a clump of elders, behind whose screen now appeared the house, as Moss had called it, which the gypsies had made for themselves. It was the tilt of a wagon, serving as a tent. Nobody was visible but a woman, crouching under the shadow of the tent, to screen from the sun that which was lying across her lap.
“What is that that she’s nursing? Lord bless me! Can that be a child?” exclaimed Mr. Nelson.
“A child in the fever,” replied Fleming.
“Lord bless me!—to see legs and arms hang down like that!” exclaimed the gentleman; and he forthwith gave the woman a lecture on her method of nursing—scolded her for letting the child get a fever—for not putting it to bed—fornot getting a doctor to it—for being a gypsy, and living under an alder clump. He then proceeded to inquire whether she had anybody else in the tent, where her husband was, whether he lived by thieving, how they would all like being transported, whether she did not think her children would all be hanged, and so on. At first, the woman tried a facetious and wheedling tone, then a whimpering one, and, finally, a scolding one. The last answered well. Mr. Nelson found that a man, to say nothing of a gentleman, has no chance with a woman with a sore heart in her breast, and a sick child in her lap, when once he has driven her to her weapon of the tongue. He said afterwards, that he had once gone to Billingsgate, on purpose to set two fisherwomen quarrelling, that he might see what it was like. The scene had fulfilled all his expectations; but he now declared that it could not compare with this exhibition behind the alders. He stood a long while, first trying to overpower the woman’s voice; and, when that seemed hopeless, poking about among the rushes with hisstick, and finally, staring in the woman’s face, in a mood between consternation and amusement;—thus he stood, waiting till the torrent should intermit; but there was no sign of intermission; and when the sick child began to move and rouse itself, and look at the strangers, as if braced by the vigor of its mother’s tongue, the prospect of an end seemed farther off than ever. Mr. Nelson shrugged his shoulders, signed to his companions, and walked away through the alders. The woman was not silent because they were out of sight. Her voice waxed shriller as it followed them, and died away only in the distance. Moss was grasping Fleming’s hand with all his might when Mr. Nelson spoke to him, and shook his stick at him, asking him how he came to play with such people, and saying that if ever he heard him learning to scold like that woman, he would beat him with that stick; so Moss vowed he never would.
When the train was in sight by which Mr. Nelson was to depart, he turned to Fleming, with the most careless air imaginable, saying,“Have you any medicine in your house?—any bark?”
“Not any. But I will send for some.”
“Ay, do. Or,—no—I will send you some. See if you can’t get these people housed somewhere, so that they may not sleep in the swamp. I don’t mean in any of your houses, but in a barn, or some such place. If the physic comes before the doctor, get somebody to dose the child. And don’t fancy you are all going to die of the fever. That is the way to make yourselves ill; and it is all nonsense, too, I dare say.”
“Do you like that gentleman?” asked Moss, sapiently, when the train was whirling Mr. Nelson out of sight. “Because I don’t—not at all.”
“I believe he is kinder than he means, Moss. He need not be so rough; but I know he does kind things sometimes.”
“But, do you like him?”
“No, I can’t say I do.”
Before many hours were over, Fleming was sorry that he had admitted this, even to himself;and for many days after he was occasionally heard telling Moss what a good gentleman Mr. Nelson was, for all his roughness of manners. With the utmost speed, before it would have been thought possible, arrived a surgeon from the next town, with medicines, and the news that he was to come every day while there was any fear of fever. The gypsies were to have been cared for; but they were gone. The marks of their fire and a few stray feathers which showed that a fowl had been plucked, alone told where they had encamped. A neighbor, who loved her poultry yard, was heard to say that the sick child would not die for want of chicken broth, she would be bound; and the nearest farmer asked if they had left any potato-peels and turnip tops for his pig. He thought that was the least they could do after making their famous gypsy stew (a capital dish, it was said) from his vegetables. They were gone; and if they had not left fever behind, they might be forgiven, for the sake of the benefit of taking themselves off. After the search for the gypsies was over, therewas still an unusual stir about the place. One and another stranger appeared and examined the low grounds, and sent for one and another of the neighboring proprietors, whether farmer, or builder, or gardener, or laborer; for every one who owned or rented a yard of land on the borders of the great ditch, or anywhere near the clay-pits or osier-beds.
It was the opinion of the few residents near the Station that something would be done to improve the place before another year; and everybody said that it must be Mr. Nelson’s doings, and that it was a thousand pities that he did not come earlier, before the fever had crept thus far along the line.
For some months past, Becky had believed without a doubt, that the day of her return home would be the very happiest day of her life. She was too young to know yet that it is not for us to settlewhich of our days shall be happy ones, nor what events shall yield us joy. The promise had not been kept that she should return when her father and mother removed into the new cottage. She had been told that there really was not, even now, decent room for them all; and that they must at least wait till the hot weather was completely over before they crowded the chamber, as they had hitherto done. And then, when autumn came on, and the creeping mists from the low grounds hung round the place from sunset till after breakfast the next day, the mother delayed sending for her daughter, unwilling that she should lose the look of health which she alone now, of all the family, exhibited. Fleming and his wife and babe prospered better than the others. The young man’s business lay on the high ground, at the top of the embankment. He was there all day while Mr. Woodruffe and Allan were below, among the ditches and the late and early fogs. Mrs. Fleming was young and strong, full of spirit and happiness; and so far fortified against the attacks of disease,as a merry heart strengthens nerve and bone and muscle, and invigorates all the vital powers. In regard to her family, her father’s hopeful spirit seemed to have passed into her. While he was becoming permanently discouraged, she was always assured that everything would come right next year. The time had arrived for her power of hope to be tested to the utmost. One day this autumn, she admitted that Becky must be sent for. She did not forget, however, to charge Allan to be cheerful, and make the best of things, and not frighten Becky by the way.
It was now the end of October. Some of the days were balmy elsewhere—the afternoons ruddy; the leaves crisp beneath the tread; the squirrel busy after the nuts in the wood; the pheasants splendid among the dry ferns in the brake, the sportsman warm and thirsty in his exploring among the stubble. In the evenings the dwellers in country houses called one another out upon the grass, to see how bright the stars were, and how softly the moonlight slept upon the woods. Whileit was thus in one place, in another, and not far off, all was dank, dim, dreary and unwholesome; with but little sun, and no moon or stars; all chill, and no glow; no stray perfumes, the last of the year, but sickly scents coming on the steam from below. Thus it was about Fleming’s house, this latter end of October, when he saw but little of his wife, because she was nursing her mother in the fever, and when he tried to amuse himself with his young baby at meal-times (awkward nurse as he was) to relieve his wife of the charge for the little time he could be at home. When the baby cried, and when he saw his Abby look wearied, he did wish, now and then, that Becky was at home; but he was patient, and helpful, and as cheerful as he could be, till the day which settled the matter. On that morning he felt strangely weak, barely able to mount the steps to the station. During the morning, several people told him he looked ill; and one person did more. The porter sent a message to the next large Station that somebody must be sent immediately to fill Fleming’s place, in case of hisbeing too ill to work. Somebody came; and before that, Fleming was in bed—certainly down in the fever. His wife was now wanted at home; and Becky must come to her mother.
Though Becky asked questions all the way home, and Allan answered them as truthfully as he knew how, she was not prepared for what she found—her father aged and bent, always in pain, more or less, and far less furnished with plans and hopes than she had ever known him; Moss, fretful and sickly, and her mother unable to turn herself in her bed. Nobody mentioned death. The surgeon who came daily, and told Becky exactly what to do, said nothing of anybody dying of the fever, while Woodruffe was continually talking of things that were to be done when his wife got well again. It was sad, and sometimes alarming, to hear the strange things that Mrs. Woodruffe said in the evenings when she was delirious; but if Abby stepped in at such times, she did not think much of it, did not look upon it as any sign of danger; and was only thankful that her husband had nodelirium. His head was always clear, she said, though he was very weak. Becky never doubted, after this, that her mother was the most severely ill of the two; and she was thunderstruck when she heard one morning the surgeon’s answers to her father’s questions about Fleming. He certainly considered it a bad case; he would not say that he could not get through; but he must say it was contrary to his expectation. When Becky saw her father’s face as he turned away and went out, she believed his heart was broken.
“But I thought,” said she to the surgeon, “I thought my mother was most ill of the two.”
“I don’t know that,” was the reply, “but she is very ill. We are doing the best we can. You are, I am sure,” he said, kindly; “and we must hope on, and do our best till a change comes. The wisest of us do not know what changes may come. But I could not keep your father in ignorance of what may happen in the other house.”
No appearances alarmed Abby. Because there was no delirium, she apprehended no danger.Even when the fatal twitchings came, the arm twitching as it lay upon the coverlid, she did not know it was a symptom of anything. As she nursed her husband perfectly well, and could not have been made more prudent and watchful by any warning, she had no warning. Her cheerfulness was encouraged, for her infant’s sake, as well as for her husband’s and her own. Some thought that her husband knew his own case. A word or two,—now a gesture, and now a look,—persuaded the surgeon and Woodruffe that he was aware that he was going. His small affairs were always kept settled; he had probably no directions to give; and his tenderness for his wife showed itself in his enjoying her cheerfulness to the last. When, as soon as it was light, one December morning, Moss was sent to ask if Abby could possibly come for a few minutes, because mother was worse, he found his sister alone, looking at the floor, her hands on her lap, though her baby was fidgetting in its cradle. Fleming’s face was covered, and he lay so still that Moss, who had never seen death, felt surethat all was over. The boy hardly knew what to do; and his sister seemed not to hear what he said. The thought of his mother,—that Abby’s going might help or save her,—moved him to act. He kissed Abby, and said she must please go to mother; and he took the baby out of the cradle, and wrapped it up, and put it into its mother’s arms; and fetched Abby’s bonnet, and took her cloak down from its peg, and opened the door for her, saying, that he would stay and take care of everything. His sister went without a word; and, as soon as he had closed the door behind her, Moss sank down on his knees before the chair where she had been sitting, and hid his face there till some one came for him,—to see his mother once more before she died.