As the two coffins were carried out, to be conveyed to the churchyard together, Mr. Nelson, who had often been backward and forward during the last six weeks, observed to the surgeon that the death of such a man as Fleming was a dreadful loss.
“It is that sort of men that the fever cuts off,”said the surgeon. “The strong man, in the prime of life, at his best period, one may say, for himself and for society, is taken away,—leaving wife and child helpless and forlorn. That is the ravage that the fever makes.”
“Well; would not people tell you that it is our duty to submit?” asked Mr. Nelson, who could not help showing some emotion by voice and countenance.
“Submit!” said the surgeon. “That depends on what the people mean who use the word. If you or I were ill of the fever, we must resign ourselves, as cheerfully as we could. But if you ask me whether we should submit to see more of our neighbors cut off by fever as these have been, I can only ask in return, whose doing it is that they are living in a swamp, and whether that is to go on? Who dug the clay pits? Who let that ditch run abroad, and make a filthy bog? Are you going to charge that upon Providence and talk of submitting to the consequences? If so, that is not my religion.”
“No, no. There is no religion in that,” replied Mr. Nelson, for once agreeing in what was said to him. “It must be looked to.”
“It must,” said the surgeon, as decidedly as if he had been a railway director, or king and parliament in one.
“I wonder whether there is a more forlorn family in England than we are now,” said Woodruffe, as he sat among his children, a few hours after the funeral.
His children were glad to hear him speak, however gloomy might be his tone. His silence had been so terrible that nothing that he could say could so weigh upon their hearts. His words, however, brought out his widowed daughter’s tears again. She was sewing—her infant lying in her lap. As her tears fell upon its face, it moved and cried. Becky came and took it up, and spokecheerfully to it. The cheerfulness seemed to be the worst of all. Poor Abby laid her forehead to the back of her chair, and sobbed as if her heart would break.
“Ay, Abby,” said her father, “your heart is breaking, and mine too. You and I can go to our rest, like those that have gone before us; but I have to think of what will become of these young things.”
“Yes, father,” said Becky gently, but with a tone of remonstrance, “you must endeavor to live, and not make up your mind to dying, because life has grown heavy and sad.”
“My dear, I am ill—very ill. It is not merely that life is grown intolerable to me. I am sure I could not live long in such misery of mind; but I am breaking up fast.”
The young people looked at each other in dismay. There was something worse than the grief conveyed by their father’s words in the hopeless daring—the despair—of his tone when he ventured to say that life was unendurable.
Becky had the child on one arm; with the other hand she took down her father’s plaid from its peg, and put it round his rheumatic shoulders, whispering in his ear a few words about desiring that God’s will should be done.
“My dear,” he replied, “it was I who taught you that lesson when you were a child on my knee, and it would be strange if I forgot it when I want so much any comfort that I can get. But I don’t believe (and if you ask the clergyman, he will tell you that he does not believe) that it is God’s will that we, or any other people, should be thrust into a swamp like this, scarcely fit for the rats and the frogs to live in. It is man’s doing, not God’s, that the fever makes such havoc as it has made with us. The fever does not lay waste healthy places.”
“Then why are we here?” Allan ventured to say. “Father, let us go.”
“Go! I wonder how or where! I can’t go, or let any of you go. I have not a pound in the world to spend in moving, or in finding new employment.And if I had, who would employ me? Who would not laugh at a crippled old man asking for work and wages?”
“Then, father, we must see what we can do here, and you must not forbid us to say ‘God’s will be done!’ If we cannot go away, it must be His will that we should stay and have as much hope and courage as we can.”
Woodruffe threw himself back in his chair. It was too much to expect that he would immediately rally; but he let the young people confer, and plan, and cheer each other.
The first thing to be done, they agreed, was to move hither, whenever the dismal rain would permit it, all Abby’s furniture that could not be disposed of to her husband’s successors. It would fit up the lower room. And Allan and Becky settled how the things could stand so as to make it at once a bed-room and sitting-room. If, as Abby had said, she meant to try to get some scholars, and keep a little school, room must be left to seat the children.
“Keep a school?” exclaimed Woodruffe, looking round at Abby.
“Yes, father,” said Abby, raising her head. “That seems to be a thing that I can do; and it will be good for me to have something to do. Becky is the stoutest of us all, and....”
“I wonder how long that will last,” groaned the father.
“I am quite stout now,” said Becky; “and I am the one to help Allan with the garden. Allan and I will work under your direction, father, while your rheumatism lasts; and....”
“And what am I to do?” asked Moss, pushing himself in.
“You shall fetch and carry the tools,” said Becky; “that is, when the weather is fine, and when your chilblains are not very bad. And you shall be bird-boy when the sowing season comes on.”
“And we are going to put up a pent-house for you, in one corner, you know, Moss,” said his brother. “And we will make it so that there shallbe room for a fire in it, where father and you may warm yourselves, and always have dry shoes ready.”
“I wonder what our shoe leather will have cost us by the time the spring comes,” observed Woodruffe. “There is not a place where we ever have to take the cart or the barrow that is not all mire and ruts; not a path in the whole garden that I call a decent one. Our shoes are all pulled to pieces; while the frost, or the fog, or something or other, prevents our getting any real work done. The waste is dreadful. Nothing should have made me take a garden where none but summer crops are to be had, if I could have foreseen such a thing. I never saw such a thing before,—never—as market-gardening without winter and spring crops. Never heard of such a thing!”
Becky glanced towards Allan, to see if he had nothing to propose. If they could neither mend the place nor leave it, it did seem a hard case. Allan was looking into the fire, musing. When Moss announced that the rain was over, Allanstarted, and said he must be fetching some of Abby’s things down, if it was fair. Becky really meant to help him; but she also wanted opportunity for consultation, as to whether it could really be God’s will that they should neither be able to mend their condition nor to escape from it. As they mounted the long flight of steps, they saw Mr. Nelson issue from the Station, looking about him to ascertain if the rain was over, and take his stand on the embankment, followed by a gentleman who had a roll of paper in his hand. As they stood, the one was seen to point with his stick, and the other with his roll of paper, this way and that. Allan set off in that direction, saying to his sister, as he went,
“Don’t you come. That gentleman is so rude, he will make you cry. Yes, I must go, and I won’t get angry; I won’t indeed. He may find as much fault as he pleases; I must show him how the water is standing in our furrows.”
“Hallo! what do you want here?” was Mr. Nelson’s greeting, when, after a minute or two, he sawAllan looking and listening. “What business have you here, hearkening to what we are saying?”
“I wanted to know whether anything is going to be done below there. I thought, if you wished it, I could tell you something about it.”
“You! what, a dainty little fellow like you?—a fellow that wears his Sunday clothes on a Tuesday, and a rainy Tuesday too! You must get working clothes and work.”
“I shall work to-morrow, Sir. My mother and my brother-in-law were buried to-day.”
“Lord bless me! You should have told me that. How should I know that unless you told me?” He proceeded in a much gentler tone, however, merely remonstrating with Allan for letting the wet stand in the furrows, in such a way as would spoil any garden. Allan had a good ally, all the while, in the stranger, who seemed to understand everything before it was explained. The gentleman was, in fact, an agricultural surveyor—one who could tell, when looking abroad from aheight, what was swamp and what meadow; where there was a clean drain, and where an uneven ditch; where the soil was likely to be watered, and where flooded by the winter rains; where genially warmed, and where fatally baked by the summer’s sun. He had seen, before Allan pointed it out, how the great ditch cut across between the cultivated grounds and the little river into which those grounds should be drained; but he could not know, till told by Allan, who were the proprietors and occupiers of the parcels of land lying on either side the ditch. Mr. Nelson knew little or nothing under this head, though he contradicted the lad every minute; was sure such an one did not live here, nor another there; told him he was confusing Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown; did not believe a word of Mr. Taylor having bought yonder meadow, or Mrs. Scott now renting that field. All the while, the surveyor went on setting down the names as Allan told them; and then observed that they were not so many but that they might combine, if they would, to drain their properties, if they couldbe relieved of the obstruction of the ditch—if the surveyor of highways would see that the ditch were taken in hand. Mr. Nelson pronounced that there should be no difficulty about the ditch, if the rest could be managed; and then, after a few whispered words between the gentlemen, Allan was asked first, whether he was sure that he knew where every person lived whose name was down in the surveyor’s book; and next, whether he would act as guide to-morrow. For a moment he thought he should be wanted to move Abby’s things; but, remembering the vast importance of the plan which seemed now to be fairly growing under his eye, he replied that he would go; he should be happy to make it his day’s work to help, ever so little, towards what he wished above everything in the world.
“What makes you in such a hurry to suppose we want to get a day’s work out of you for nothing?” asked Mr. Nelson. He thrust half-a-crown into the lad’s waistcoat pocket, saying that he must give it back again, if he led the gentleman wrong.The gentleman had no time to go running about the country on a fool’s errand; Allan must mind that. As Allan touched his hat, and ran down the steps, Mr. Nelson observed that boys with good hearts did not fly about in that way, as if they were merry, on the day of their mother’s funeral.
“Perhaps he is rather thinking of saving his father,” observed the surveyor.
“Well; save as many of them as you can. They seem all going to pot as it is.”
When Allan burst in, carrying nothing of Abby’s, but having a little color in his cheeks for once, his father sat up in his chair, the baby suddenly stopped crying, and Moss asked where he had been. At first, his father disappointed him by being listless—first refusing to believe anything good, and then saying that any good that could happen now was too late; and Abby could not help crying all the more because this was not thought about a year sooner. It was her poor husband that had made the stir; and now theywere going to take his advice the very day that he was laid in his grave. They all tried to comfort her, and said how natural it was that she should feel it so; yet, amidst all their sympathy, they could not help being cheered that something was to be done at last.
By degrees, and not slow degrees, Woodruffe became animated. It was surprising how many things he desired Allan to be sure not to forget to point out to the surveyor, and to urge upon those he was to visit. At last he said he would go himself. It was a very serious business, and he ought to make an effort to have it done properly. It was a great effort, but he would make it. Not rheumatism, nor anything else, should keep him at home. Allan was glad at heart to see such signs of energy in his father, though he might feel some natural disappointment at being left at home, and some perplexity as to what, in that case, he ought to do about the half-crown, if Mr. Nelson should be gone home. The morning settled this, however. The surveyor was in his gig. If Allan could hang on,or keep up with it, it would be very well, as he would be wanted to open the gates, and to lead the way in places too wet for his father, who was not worth such a pair of patent waterproof tall boots as the surveyor had on.
The circuit was not a very wide one; yet it was dark before they got home. There are always difficulties in arrangements which require combined action. Here there were different levels in the land, and different tempers and views among the occupiers. Mr. Brown had heard nothing about the matter, and could not be hurried till he saw occasion. Mr. Taylor liked his field best, wet—would not have it drier on any account, for fear of the summer sun. When assured that drought took no hold on well-dried land in comparison with wet land, he shook with laughter, and asked if they expected him to believe that. Mrs. Scott, whose combination with two others was essential to the drainage of three portions, would wait another year. They must go on without her; and after another year, she would see what she woulddo. Another had drained his land in his own way long ago, and did not expect that anybody would ask him to put his spade into another man’s land, or to let any other man put his spade into his. These were all the obstructions. Everybody else was willing, or at least, not obstructive. By clever management, it was thought that the parties concerned could make an island of Mrs. Scott and her field, and win over Mr. Brown by the time he was wanted, and show Mr. Taylor that, as his field could no longer be as wet as it had been, he might as well try the opposite condition—they promising to flood his field as often and as thoroughly as he pleased, if he found it the worse for being drained. They could not obtain all they wished, where everybody was not as wise as could be wished; but so much was agreed upon as made the experienced surveyor think that the rest would follow; enough, already, to set more laborers to work than the place could furnish. Two or three stout men were sent from a distance; and when they had once cut a clear descent from the ditch to the river,and had sunk the ditch to seven feet deep, and made the bottom even, and narrowed it to three feet, it was a curious thing to see how ready the neighbors became to unite their drains with it. It used to be said, that here—however it might be elsewhere—the winter was no time for digging; but that must have meant that no winter-digging would bring a spring crop; and that therefore it was useless. Now, the sound of the spade never ceased for the rest of the winter; and the laborers thought it the best winter they had ever known for constant work. Those who employed the labor hoped it would answer—found it expensive—must trust it was all right, and would yield a profit by and by. As for the Woodruffes, they were too poor to employ laborers. But some little hope had entered their hearts again, and brought strength, not only to their hearts, but to their very limbs. They worked like people beginning the world. As poor Abby could keep the house and sew, while attending to her little school, Becky did the lighter parts (and some which were far from light)of the garden work, finding easy tasks for Moss; and Allan worked like a man at the drains. They had been called good drains before; but now, there was an outfall for deeper ones; and deeper they must be made. Moreover, a strong rivalry arose among the neighbors about their respective portions of the combined drainage; and under the stimulus of ambition, Woodruffe recovered his spirits and the use of his limbs wonderfully. He suffered cruelly from his rheumatism; and in the evenings felt as if he could never more lift a spade; yet, not the less was he at work again in the morning, and so sanguine as to the improvement of his ground, that it was necessary to remind him, when calculating his gains, that it would take two years, at least, to prove the effects of his present labors.
It was observed by Woodruffe’s family, during one week of spring of the next year, that he was very absent. He was not in low spirits, but absorbed in thought, and much devoted to making calculations with pencil and paper. At last, out it came, one morning at breakfast.
“I wonder how we should all like to have Harry Hardiman to work with us again?”
Every one looked up. Harry! where was Harry? Was he here? Was he coming?
“Why, I will tell you what I have been thinking,” said their father. “I have thought long and carefully, and I believe I have made up my mind to send for Harry, to come and work for us as he used to do. We have not labor enough on the ground. Two stout men to the acre is the smallest allowance for trying what could be made of the place.”
“That is what Taylor and Brown are employingnow on the best part of their land,” said Allan; “that is, when they can get the labor. There is such difference between that and one man to four or five acres, as there was before, that they can’t always get the labor.”
“Just so; and therefore,” continued Woodruffe, “I am thinking of sending for Harry. Our old neighborhood was not prosperous when we left it, and I fancy it cannot have improved since; and Harry might be glad to follow his master to a thriving neighborhood; and he is such a careful fellow that I dare say he has money for the journey,—even if he has a wife by this time, as I suppose he has.”
Moss looked most pleased, where all were pleased, at the idea of seeing Harry again. His remembrance of Harry was of a tall young man, who used to carry him on his shoulders, and wheel him in the empty water-barrel, and sometimes offer to dip him into it when it was full, and show him how to dig in the sand-heap with his little wooden spade.
“Your rent, to be sure, is much lower than in the old place,” observed Abby.
“Why, we must not build upon that,” replied the father; “rent is rising here, and will rise. My landlord was considerate in lowering mine to £3 per acre, when he saw how impossible it was to make it answer; and he says he shall not ask more yet on account of the labor I laid out at the time of the drainage. But when I have partly repaid myself, the rent will rise to £5; and, in fact, I have made my calculations in regard to Harry’s coming at a higher rent than that.”
“Higher than that?”
“Yes; I should not be surprised if I found myself paying, as market-gardeners near London do, ten pounds per acre before I die.”
“Or rather, to let the ground to me for that, father,” said Allan, “when it is your own property, and you are tired of work, and disposed to turn it over to me. I will pay you ten pounds per acre then, and let you have all the cabbages you caneat besides. It is capital land, and that is the truth. Come—shall that be a bargain?”
Woodruffe smiled, and said he owed a duty to Allan. He did not like to see him so hard worked as to be unable to take due care of his own corner of the garden;—unable to enter fairly into the competition for the prizes at the Horticultural Show in the summer. Becky now, too, ought to be spared from all but occasional help in the garden. Above all, the ground was now in such an improving state that it would be waste not to bestow due labor upon it. Put in the spade where you would, the soil was loose and well-aired as needs be: the manure penetrated it thoroughly; the frost and heat pulverized, instead of binding it; and the crops were succeeding each other so fast, that the year would be a very profitable one.
“Where will Harry live, if he comes?” asked Abby.
“We must get another cottage added to the new row. Easily done! Cottages so healthy as these new ones pay well. Good rents are offered forthem,—to save doctors’ bills and loss of time from sickness;—and, when once a system of house-drainage is set a-going, it costs scarcely more in adding a cottage to a group, to make it all right, than to run it up upon solid clay as used to be the way here. Well, I have a good mind to write to Harry to-day. What do you think of it,—all of you?”
Fortified by the opinion of all his children, Mr. Woodruffe wrote to Harry. Meantime, Allan and Becky went to cut the vegetables that were for sale that day; and Moss delighted himself in running after and catching the pony in the meadow below. The pony was not very easily caught, for it was full of spirit. Instead of the woolly insipid grass that it used to crop, and which seemed to give it only fever and no nourishment, it now fed on sweet fresh grass, which had no sour stagnant water soaking its roots. The pony was so full of play this morning that Moss could not get hold of it. Though much stronger than a year ago, he was not yet anything like so robust as a boy of his ageshould be; and he was growing heated, and perhaps a little angry, as the pony galloped off towards some distant trees, when a boy started up behind a bush, caught the halter, brought the pony round with a twitch, and led him to Moss. Moss fancied he had seen the boy before, and then his white teeth reminded Moss of one thing after another.
“I came for some marsh plants,” said the boy. “You and I got plenty once somewhere hereabouts, but I cannot find them now.”
“You will not find any now. We have no marsh now.”
The stranger said he dared not go back without them; mother wanted them badly. She would not believe him if he said he could not find any. There were plenty about two miles off, along the railway, among the clay-pits, he was told; but none nearer. The boy wanted to know where the clay-pits hereabouts were. He could not find one of them.
“I will show you one of them,” said Moss; “the one where you and I used to hunt rats.” And,leading the pony, he showed his old gypsy play-fellow all the improvements, beginning with the great ditch,—now invisible from being covered in. While it was open, he said, it used to get choked, and the sides were plastered after rain, and soon became grass-grown, so that it was found worth while to cover it in; and now it would want little looking to for years to come. As for the clay-pit, where the rats used to pop in and out,—it was now a manure-pit, covered in. There was a drain into it from the pony’s stable and from the pig-styes; and it was near enough to the garden to receive the refuse and sweepings. A heavy lid, with a ring in the middle, covered the pit, so that nobody could fall in in the dark, and no smell could get out. Moss begged the boy to come a little further, and he would show him his own flower-bed; and when the boy was there, he was shown everything else: what a cart-load of vegetables lay cut for sale; and what an arbor had been made of the pent-house under which Moss used to take shelter, when he could do nothing better than keep off the birds;and how fine the ducks were,—the five ducks that were so serviceable in eating off the slugs; and what a comfortable nest had been made for them to lay their eggs in, beside the water-tank in the corner; and what a variety of scarecrows the family had invented,—each having one, to try which would frighten the sparrows most. While Moss was telling how difficult it was to deal with the sparrows, because they could not be frightened for more than three days by any kind of scarecrow, he heard Allan calling him, in a tone of vexation, at being kept waiting so long. In an instant the stranger boy was off,—leaping the gate, and flying along the meadow till he was hidden behind a hedge.
Two or three days after this one of the ducks was missing. The last time that the five had been seen together was when Moss was showing them to his visitor. The morning after Moss finally gave up hope, the glass of Allan’s hotbed was found broken, and in the midst of the bed itself was a deep foot-track, crushing the cucumber plants, and,with them, Allan’s hopes of a cucumber prize at the Horticultural Exhibition in the summer. On more examination, more mischief was discovered, some cabbages had been stolen, and another duck was missing. In the midst of the general concern, Woodruffe burst out a-laughing. It struck him that the chief of the scarecrows had changed his hat; and so he had. The old straw hat which used to flap in the wind so serviceably was gone, and in its stead appeared a helmet,—a saucepan full of holes, battered and split, but still fit to be a helmet to a scarecrow.
“I could swear to the old hat,” observed Woodruffe, “if I should have the luck to see it on anybody’s head.”
“And so could I,” said Becky, “for I mended it,—bound it with black behind, and green before, because I had not green ribbon enough. But nobody would wear it before our eyes.”
“That is why I suspect there are strangers hovering about. We must watch.”
Now Moss, for the first time, bethought himselfof the boy he had brought in from the meadow; and now, for the first time, he told his family of that encounter.
“I never saw such a simpleton,” his father declared. “There, go along and work! Now, don’t cry, but hold up like a man and work.”
Moss did cry; he could not help it; but he worked too. He would fain have been one of the watchers, moreover; but his father said he was too young. For two nights he was ordered to bed, when Allan took his dark lantern, and went down to the pent-house; the first night accompanied by his father, and the next by Harry Hardiman, who had come on the first summons. By the third evening, Moss was so miserable that his sisters interceded for him, and he was allowed to go down with his old friend Harry.
It was a starlight night, without a moon. The low country lay dim, but unobscured by mist. After a single remark on the fineness of the night, Harry was silent. Silence was their first business. They stole round the fence as if they had beenthieves themselves, listened for some time before they let themselves in at the gate, passed quickly in, and locked the gate (the lock of which had been well oiled), went behind every screen, and along every path, to be sure that no one was there, and finally, perceiving that the remaining ducks were safe, settled themselves in the darkness of the pent-house.
There they sat, hour after hour, listening. If there had been no sound, perhaps they could not have borne the effort; but the sense was relieved by the bark of a dog at a distance, and then by the hoot of the owl that was known to have done them good service in mousing, many a time; and once, by the passage of a train on the railway above. When these were all over, poor Moss had much ado to keep awake, and at last his head sank on Harry’s shoulder, and he forgot where he was, and everything else in the world. He was awakened by Harry’s moving, and then whispering quite into his ear:—
“Sit you still. I hear somebody yonder. No—sit you still. I won’t go far—not out of call; but I must get between them and the gate.”
With his lantern under his coat, Harry stole forth, and Moss stood up, all alone in the darkness and stillness. He could hear his heart beat, but nothing else, till footsteps on the path came nearer and nearer. They came quite up; they came in, actually into the arbor; and then the ducks were certainly fluttering. In an instant more, there was a gleam of light upon the white plumage of the ducks, and then light enough to show that this was the gypsy boy, with a dark lantern hung round his neck, and, at the same moment, to show the gypsy boy that Moss was there. The two boys stood, face to face, motionless from utter amazement, and the ducks had scuttled and waddled away before they recovered themselves. Then, Moss flew at him in a glorious passion, at once of rage and fear.
“Leave him to me, Moss,” cried Harry, casting light upon the scene from his lantern, while he collared the thief with the other hand. “Let go, Isay, Moss. There, now we’ll go round and be sure whether there is any one else in the garden, and then we’ll lodge this young rogue where he will be safe.”
Nobody was there, and they went home in the dawn, locked up the thief in the shed, and slept through what remained of the night.
It was about Mr. Nelson’s usual time for coming down the line; and it was observed that he now always stopped at this station till the next train passed,—probably because it was a pleasure to him to look upon the improvement of the place. It was no surprise therefore to Woodruffe to see him standing on the embankment after breakfast; and it was natural that Mr. Nelson should be immediately told that the gypsies were here again, and how one of them was caught thieving.
“Thieving! So you found some of your property upon him, did you!”
“Why, no. I thought myself that it was a pity that Moss did not let him alone till he had laid hold of a duck or something.”
“Pho! pho! don’t tell me you can punish the boy for theft, when you can’t prove that he stole anything. Give him a whipping, and let him go.”
“With all my heart. It will save me much trouble to finish off the matter so.”
Mr. Nelson seemed to have some curiosity about the business; for he accompanied Woodruffe to the shed. The boy seemed to feel no awe of the great man whom he supposed to be a magistrate, and when asked whether he felt none, he giggled and said “No;” he had seen the gentleman more afraid of his mother than anybody ever was of him, he fancied. On this, a thought struck Mr. Nelson. He would now have his advantage of the gypsy woman, and might enjoy, at the same time, an opportunity of studying human nature under stress—a thing he liked, when the stress was not too severe. So he passed a decree on the spot that, it being now nine o’clock, the boy should remain shut up without food till noon, when he should be severely flogged, and driven from the neighborhood; and with this pleasant prospectbefore him, the young rogue remained, whistling ostentatiously, while his enemies locked the door upon him.
“Did you hear him shoot the bolt?” asked Woodruffe. “If he holds to that, I don’t know how I shall get at him at noon.”
“There, now, what fools people are! Why did you not take out the bolt? A pretty constable you would make! Come—come this way. I am going to find the gypsy-tent again. You are wondering that I am not afraid of the woman, I see; but, you observe, I have a hold over her this time. What do you mean by allowing those children to gather about your door? You ought not to permit it.”
“They are only the scholars. Don’t you see them going in? My daughter keeps a little school, you know, since her husband’s death.”
“Ah, poor thing! poor thing!” said Mr. Nelson, as Abby appeared on the threshold, calling the children in.
Mr. Nelson always contrived to see some one ormore of the family when he visited the station; but it so happened, that he had never entered the door of their dwelling. Perhaps he was not himself fully conscious of the reason. It was, that he could not bear to see Abby’s young face within the widow’s cap, and to be thus reminded that hers was a case of cruel wrong; that if the most ordinary thought and care had been used in preparing the place for human habitation, her husband might be living now, and she the happy creature that she would never be again.
On his way to the gypsies, Mr. Nelson saw some things that pleased him in his heart, though he found fault with them all. What business had Woodruffe with an additional man in his garden? It could not possibly answer. If it did not, the fellow must be sent away again. He must not burden the parish. The occupiers here seemed all alike. Such a fancy for new labor! One, two, six men at work on the land within sight at that moment, over and above what there used to be! It must be looked to. Humph! he could get tothe alders dryshod now; but that was owing solely to the warmth of the spring. It was nonsense to attribute everything to drainage. Drainage was a good thing; but fine weather was better.
The gypsy-tent was found behind the alders as before, but no longer in a swamp. The woman was sitting on the ground at the entrance as before, but not now with a fevered child laid across her knees. She was weaving a basket.
“Oh, I see,” said Woodruffe, “this is the way our osiers go.”
“You have not many to lose, now-a-days,” said the woman.
“You are welcome to all the rushes you can find,” said Woodruffe; “but where is your son?”
Some change of countenance was seen in the woman; but she answered carelessly that the children were playing yonder.
“The one I mean is not there,” said Woodruffe, “We have him safe—caught him stealing my ducks.”
She called the boy a villain—disowned him, andso forth; but when she found the case a hopeless one, she did not, and, therefore, probably could not scold—that is, anybody but herself and her husband. She cursed herself for coming into this silly place, where now no good was to be got. When she was brought to the right point of perplexity about what to do, seeing that it would not do to stay, and being unable to go while her boy was in durance, she was told that his punishment should be summary, though severe, if she would answer frankly certain questions. When she had once begun giving her confidence, she seemed to enjoy the license. When her husband came up, he looked as if he only waited for the departure of his visitors to give his wife the same amount of thrashing that her son was awaiting elsewhere. She vowed that they would never pitch their tent here again. It used to be the best station in their whole round—the fogs were so thick! From sunset to long after sunrise, it had been as good as a winter night, for going where they pleased without fear of prying eyes. There was not a poultry-yardor pig-stye within a couple of miles round, where they could not creep up through the fog. And they escaped the blame, too; for the swamp and ditches used to harbor so much vermin, that the gypsies were not always suspected, as they were now. Till lately, people shut themselves into their homes, or the men went to the public-house in the chill evenings; and there was little fear of meeting any one. But now that the fogs were gone, people were out in their gardens, on these fine evenings, and there were men in the meadows, returning from fishing; for they could angle now, when their work was done, without the fear of catching an ague in the marsh as they went home.
Mr. Nelson used vigorously his last opportunity of lecturing these people. He had it all his own way, for the humility of the gypsies was edifying. Woodruffe fancied he saw some finger-talk passing, the while, though the gypsies never looked at each other, or raised their eyes from the ground. Woodruffe had to remind the Director that the whistle of the next train would soon be heard; and thisbrought the lecture to an abrupt conclusion. On his finishing off with, “I expect, therefore, that you will remember my advice, and never show your face here again, and that you will take to a proper course of life in future, and bring up your son to honest industry;” the woman, with a countenance of grief, seized one hand and covered it with kisses, and the husband took the other hand and pressed it to his breast.
“We must make haste,” observed Mr. Nelson, as he led the way quickly back; “but I think I have made some impression upon them. You see now the right way to treat these people. I don’t think you will see them here again.”
“I don’t think we shall.”
As he reached the steps the whistle was heard, and Mr. Nelson could only wave his hand to Woodruffe, rush up the embankment, and throw himself panting into a carriage. Only just in time!
By an evening train he re-appeared. When thirty miles off, he had wanted his purse, and itwas gone. It had no doubt paid for the gypsies’ final gratitude.
Of course, a sufficient force was immediately sent to the alder clump; but there was nothing there but some charred sticks, and some clean pork bones, this time, instead of feathers of fowls, and a cabbage leaf or two. The boy had had his whipping at noon, after a conference with his little brother at the keyhole, which had caused him to withdraw the bolt, and offer no resistance. Considering his cries and groans, he had run off with surprising agility, and was now, no doubt, far away.
The gypsies came no more. The fogs came no more. The fever came no more, at least, in such a form as to threaten the general safety. Where it still lingered, it was about those only who deservedit,—in any small farm-house, where the dung-yard was too near the house; and in some cottage where the slatternly inmates did not mind a green puddle or choked ditch within reach of their noses. More dwellings arose, as the fertility of the land increased, and invited a higher kind of tillage; and among the prettiest of them was one which stood in the corner,—the most sunny corner,—of Woodruffe’s paddock. Harry Hardiman and his wife and child lived there, and the cottage was Woodruffe’s property.
Yet Woodruffe’s rent had been raised, and pretty rapidly. He was now paying eight pounds per acre for his garden-ground, and half that for what was out of the limits of the garden. He did not complain of it; for he was making money fast. His skill and industry deserved this; but skill and industry could not have availed without opportunity. His ground once allowed to show what it was worth, he treated it well; and it answered well to the treatment. By the railway he obtained what manure he wanted from the town; and hesent it back by the railway to town in the form of crisp celery and salads, wholesome potatoes and greens, luscious strawberries, and sweet and early peas. He knew that a Surrey gardener had made his ground yield a profit of two hundred and twenty pounds per acre. He thought that, with his inferior market, he should do well to make his yield one hundred and fifty pounds per acre; and this, by close perseverance, he attained. He could have done it more easily if he had enjoyed good health; but he never enjoyed good health again. His rheumatism had fixed itself too firmly to be entirely removed; and for many days in the year, he was compelled to remain within doors, or to saunter about in the sun, seeing his boys and Harry at work, but unable to help them.
From the time that Allan’s work became worth wages in addition to his subsistence, his father let him rent half a rood of the garden-ground for three years, saying—
“I limit it to three years, my boy, because that term is long enough for you to show what you cando. After three years, I shall not be able to spare the ground at any rent. If you fail, you have no business to rent ground. If you succeed, you will have money in your pocket wherewith to hire land elsewhere. Now you have to show us what you can do.”
“Yes, father,” was Allan’s short but sufficient reply.
It was observed by the family that, from this time forward, Allan’s eye was on every plot of ground in the neighborhood which could, by possibility, ever be offered for hire; yet did his attention never wander from that which was already under his hand. And that which was so great an object to him became a sort of pursuit to the whole family. Moss guarded Allan’s frames, and made more and more prodigious scarecrows. Their father gave his very best advice. Becky, who was no longer allowed, as a regular thing, to work in the garden, found many a spare half-hour for hoeing and weeding, and trimming and tying up, in Allan’s beds; and Abby found, as she sat in her littleschool, that she could make nets for his fruit trees. It was thus no wonder that, when a certain July day in the second year arrived, the whole household was in a state of excitement, because it was a sort of crisis in Allan’s affairs.
Though breakfast was early that morning, Becky and Allan and Moss were spruce in their best clothes. A hamper stood at the door, and Allan was packing in another, which had no lid, two or three flower-pots, which presented a glorious show of blossom. Abby was putting a new ribbon on her sister’s straw bonnet; and Harry was in waiting to carry up the hampers to the station. It was the day of the Horticultural Show at the town. Woodruffe had been too unwell to think of going till this morning; but now the sight of the preparations, and the prospect of a warm day, inspired him, and he thought he would go. At last he went, and they were gone. Abby never went up to the station; nobody ever asked her to go there, not even her own child, who perhaps had not thought of the possibility of it. But when thetrain was starting, she stood at the upper window with her child, and held him so that he might lean out, and see the last carriage disappear as it swept round the curve. After that the day seemed long, though Harry came up at the dinner-hour to say what he thought of the great gooseberry in particular, and of everything else that Allan had carried with him. It was holiday time, and there was no school to fill up the day. Before the evening, the child became restless, and Abby fell into low spirits, as she was apt to do when left long alone; so that Harry stopped suddenly at the door when he was rushing in to announce that the train was within sight.
“Shall I take the child, Miss?” said Harry. (He always called her “Miss.”) “I will carry him—— But, sure, here they come! Here comes Moss,—ready to roll down the steps! My opinion is that there’s a prize.”
Moss was called back by a voice which everybody obeyed. Allan should himself tell his sister the fortune of the day, their father said.
There were two prizes, one of which was for the wonderful plate of gooseberries; and at this news Harry nodded, and declared himself anything but surprised. If that gooseberry had not carried the day, there would have been partiality in the judges, that was all; and nobody could suppose such a thing as that. Yet Harry could have told, if put upon his honor, that he was rather disappointed that everything that Allan carried had not gained a prize. When he mentioned one or two, his master told him he was unreasonable; and he supposed he was.
Allan laid down upon the table, for his sister’s full assurance, his sovereign, and his half-sovereign, and his tickets. She turned away rather abruptly, and seemed to be looking whether the kettle was near boiling for tea. Her father went up to her; and on his first whispered words, the sob broke forth which made all look round.
“I was thinking of one, too, my dear, that I wish was here at this moment. I can feel for you, my dear.”
“But you don’t know—you don’t know—you never knew——.” She could not go on.
“What don’t I know, my dear?”
“That he constantly blamed himself for saying anything to bring you here. He said you had never prospered from the hour you came, and now——”
And now Woodruffe could not speak, as the past came fresh upon him. In a few moments, however, he rallied, saying,
“But we must consider Allan. He must not think that his success makes us sad.”
Allan declared that it was not about gaining the prizes that he was chiefly glad. It was because it was now proved what a fair field he had before him. There was nothing that might not be done with such a soil as they had to deal with now.
Harry was quite of this opinion. There were more and more people set to work upon the soil all about them; and the more it was worked the more it yielded. He never saw a place of so muchpromise. And if it had a bad name in regard to healthiness, he was sure that was unfair,—or no longer fair. He and his were full of health and happiness, as they hoped to see everybody else in time; and, for his part, if he had all England before him, or the whole world, to choose a place to live in, he would choose the very place he was in, and the very cottage, and the very ground to work on that had produced such a gooseberry and such strawberries as he had seen that day.
A FAIRY TALE.
THE SUITORS OF CIRRHA, AND THE YOUNG LADY; WITH A REFERENCE TO HER PAPA.
FAR in the west there is a land mountainous, and bright of hue, wherein the rivers run with liquid light; the soil is all of yellow gold; the grass and foliage are of resplendent crimson; where the atmosphere is partly of a soft green tint, and partly azure. Sometimes on summer evenings we see this land, and then, because our ignorance must refer all things that we see, to something that we know, we say it is a mass of clouds made beautiful by sunset colors. We account for it by principles of Meteorology. The fact has been omitted from the works of Kaemtz or Daniell; but, notwithstandingthis neglect, it is well known in many nurseries, that the bright land we speak of, is a world inhabited by fairies. Few among fairies take more interest in man’s affairs than the good Cloud Country People; this truth is established by the story I am now about to tell.
Not long ago there were great revels held one evening in the palace of King Cumulus, the monarch of the western country. Cirrha, the daughter of the king, was to elect her future husband from a multitude of suitors. Cirrha was a maiden delicate and pure, with a skin white as unfallen snow; but colder than the snow her heart had seemed to all who sought for her affections. When Cirrha floated gracefully and slowly through her father’s hall, many a little cloud would start up presently to tread where she had trodden. The winds also pursued her; and even men looked up admiringly whenever she stepped forth into their sky. To be sure they called her Mackerel and Cat’s Tail, just as they call her father Ball of Cotton; for the race of man is a coarse race, and calling bad namesappears to be a great part of its business here below.
Before the revels were concluded, the King ordered a quiet little wind to run among the guests, and bid them all come close to him and to his daughter. Then he spoke to them as follows:—
“Worthy friends! there are among you many suitors to my daughter Cirrha, who is pledged this evening to choose a husband. She bids me tell you that she loves you all; but since it is desirable that this our royal house be strengthened by a fit alliance with some foreign power, she has resolved to take as husband one of those guests who have come hither from the principality of Nimbus.” Now, Nimbus is that country, not seldom visible from some parts of our earth, which we have called the Rain-Cloud. “The subjects of the Prince of Nimbus,” Cumulus continued, “are a dark race, it is true, but they are famed for their beneficence.”
Two winds, at this point, raised between themselves a great disturbance, so that there arose a universal cry that somebody should turn them out.With much trouble they were driven out from the assembly; thereupon, quite mad with jealousy and disappointment, they went howling off to sea, where they played pool-billiards with a fleet of ships, and so forgot their sorrow.
King Cumulus resumed his speech, and said that he was addressing himself, now, especially to those of his good friends who came from Nimbus. “To-night, let them retire to rest, and early the next morning let each of them go down to Earth; whichever of them should be found on their return to have been engaged below in the most useful service to the race of man, that son of Nimbus should be Cirrha’s husband.”
Cumulus, having said this, put a white nightcap on his head, which was the signal for a general retirement. The golden ground of his dominions was covered for the night, as well as the crimson trees, with cotton. So the whole kingdom was put properly to bed. Late in the night the moon got up, and threw over King Cumulus a silver counterpane.
THE ADVENTURES OF NEBULUS AND NUBIS.
The suitors of the Princess Cirrha, who returned to Nimbus, were a-foot quite early the next morning, and petitioned their good-natured Prince to waft them over London. They had agreed among themselves, that by descending there, where men were densely congregated, they should have a greater chance of doing service to the human race. Therefore the Rain-Cloud floated over the great City of the World, and, as it passed at sundry points, the suitors came down upon rain-drops to perform their destined labor. Where each might happen to alight depended almost wholly upon accident; so that their adventures were but little better than a lottery for Cirrha’s hand. One, who had been the most magniloquent among them all, fell with his pride upon the patched umbrella of an early breakfast woman, and from thence was shakenoff into a puddle. He was splashed up presently, mingled with soil, upon the corduroys of a laborer, who stopped for breakfast on his way to work. From thence, evaporating, he returned crest-fallen to the Land of Clouds.
Among the suitors there were two kind-hearted fairies, Nebulus and Nubis, closely bound by friendship to each other. While they were in conversation, Nebulus, who suddenly observed that they were passing over some unhappy region, dropped, with a hope that he might bless it. Nubis passed on, and presently alighted on the surface of the Thames.
The district which had wounded the kind heart of Nebulus was in a part of Bermondsey, called Jacob’s Island. The fairy fell into a ditch; out of this, however, he was taken by a woman, who carried him to her own home, among other ditch-water, within a pail. Nebulus abandoned himself to complete despair, for what claim could he now establish on the hand of Cirrha? The miserable plight of the poor fairy we may gather from a descriptiongiven by a son of man of the sad place to which he had descended. “In this Island may be seen, at any time of the day, women dipping water, with pails attached by ropes to the backs of the houses, from a foul fetid ditch, its banks coated with a compound of mud and filth, and strewed with offal and carrion; the water to be used for every purpose, culinary ones not excepted; although close to the place whence it is drawn, filth and refuse of various kinds are plentifully showered into it from the outhouses of the wooden houses overhanging its current, or rather slow and sluggish stream; their posts or supporters rotten, decayed, and in many instances broken, and the filth dropping into the water, to be seen by any passer by. During the summer, crowds of boys bathe in the putrid ditches, where they must come in contact with abominations highly injurious.”[1]
So Nebulus was carried in a pail out of the ditch to a poor woman’s home, and put into a batteredsaucepan with some other water. Thence, after boiling, he was poured into an earthen tea-pot over some stuff of wretched flavor, said to be tea. Now, thought the fairy, after all, I may give pleasure at the breakfast of these wretched people. He pictured to himself a scene of love as preface to a day of squalid toil, but he experienced a second disappointment. The woman took him to another room of which the atmosphere was noisome; there he saw that he was destined for the comfort of a man and his two children, prostrate upon the floor beneath a heap of rags. These three were sick; the woman swore at them, and Nebulus shrunk down into the bottom of the tea-pot. Even the thirst of fever could not tolerate too much of its contents, so Nebulus, after a little time, was carried out and thrown into a heap of filth upon the gutter.
Nubis, in the meantime, had commenced his day with hope of a more fortunate career. On falling first into the Thames he had been much annoyed by various pollutions, and been surprised to find, on kissing a few neighbor drops, that their lipstasted inky. This was caused, they said, by chalk pervading the whole river in the proportion of sixteen grains to the gallon. That was what made their water inky to the taste of those who were accustomed to much purer draughts. “It makes,” they explained, “our river-water hard, according to man’s phrase; so hard as to entail on multitudes who use it, some disease, with much expense and trouble.”
“But all the mud and filth,” said Nubis, “surely no man drinks that?”
“No,” laughed the River-Drops, “not all of it. Much of the water used in London passes through filters, and a filter suffers no mud or any impurity to pass, except what is dissolved. The chalk is dissolved, and there is filth and putrid gas dissolved.”
“That is a bad business,” said Nubis, who already felt his own drops exercising that absorbent power for which water is so famous, and incorporating in their substance matters that the Rain-Cloud never knew.
Presently Nubis found himself entangled in a current, by which he was sucked through a long pipe into a meeting of Water-Drops, all summoned from the Thames. He himself passed through a filter, was received into a reservoir, and, having asked the way of friendly neighbors, worked for himself with small delay a passage through the mainpipe into London.
Bewildered by his long, dark journey underground, Nubia at length saw light, and presently dashed forth out of a tap into a pitcher. He saw that there was fixed under the tap a water-butt, but into this he did not fall. A crowd of women holding pitchers, saucepans, pails, were chattering and screaming over him, and the anxiety of all appeared to be to catch the water as it ran out of the tap, before it came into the tub or cistern. Nubis rejoiced that his good fortune brought him to a district in which it might become his privilege to bless the poor, and his eye sparkled as his mistress, with many rests upon the way, carried her pitcher and a heavy pail upstairs. She placedboth vessels, full of water, underneath her bed, and then went out again for more, carrying a basin and a fish-kettle. Nubis pitied the poor creature, heartily wishing that he could have poured out of a tap into the room itself to save the time and labor of his mistress.
The pitcher wherein the good fairy lurked, remained under the bed through the remainder of that day, and during the next night, the room being, for the whole time, closely tenanted. Long before morning, Nubis felt that his own drops and all the water near him had lost their delightful coolness, and had been busily absorbing smells and vapors from the close apartment. In the morning, when the husband dipped a teacup in the pitcher, Nubis readily ran into it, glad to escape from his unwholesome prison. The man putting the water to his lips, found it so warm and repulsive, that, in a pet, he flung it from the window, and it fell into the water-butt beneath.
The water-butt was of the common sort, described thus by a member of the human race:—“Generally speaking, the wood becomes decomposed and covered with fungi; and indeed, I can best describe their condition by terming them filthy.” This water-butt was placed under the same shed with a neglected cesspool, from which the water—ever absorbing—had absorbed pollution. It contained a kitten among other trifles. “How many people have to drink out of this butt?” asked Nubis. “Really I cannot tell you,” said a neighbor Drop. “Once I was in a butt in Bethnal Green, twenty-one inches across, and a foot deep, which was to supply forty-eight families.[2]People store for themselves, and when they know how dirty these tubs are, they should not use them.” “But the labor of dragging water home, the impossibility of taking home abundance, the pollution of keeping it in dwelling-rooms and under beds.” “Oh, yes,” said the other Drop; “all very true. Besides, our water is not of a sort to keep. In this tub there is quite a microscopic vegetable garden, so I heard a doctor say who yesterdaycame hither with a party to inspect the district. One of them said he had a still used only for distilling water, and that one day, by chance, the bottoms of a series of distillations boiled to dryness. Thereupon, the dry mass became heated to the decomposing point, and sent abroad a stench plain to the dullest nose as the peculiar stench of decomposed organic matter. It infected, he said, the produce of many distillations afterwards.”[3]“I tell you what,” said Nubis, “water may come down into this town innocent enough, but it’s no easy matter for it to remain good among so many causes of corruption. Heigho!” Then he began to dream of Princess Cirrha and the worthy Prince of Nimbus, until he was aroused by a great tumult. It was an uproar caused by drunken men. “Why are those men so?” said Nubis to his friend. “I don’t know,” said the Water-Drop, “but I saw many people in that way last night, and I have seen them so at Bethnal Green.” A woman pulled her husband by, with loud reproaches for his visitsto the beer-shop. “Why,” cried the man, with a great oath, “where would you have me go for drink?” Then, with another oath, he kicked the water-butt in passing—“You would not have me to go there!” All the bystanders laughed approvingly, and Nubis bade adieu to his ambition for the hand of Cirrha.
NEPHELO GOES INTO POLITE SOCIETY, AND THEN INTO A DUNGEON—HIS ESCAPE, RECAPTURE, AND HIS PERILOUS ASCENT INTO THE SKY, SURROUNDED BY A BLAZE OF FIRE.
Nephelo was a light-hearted subject of the Prince of Nimbus. It is he who often floats, when the whole cloud is dark, as a white vapor on the surface. For love of Cirrha, he came down behind a team of rain-drops and leaped into the cistern of a handsome house at the west end of London.
Nephelo found the water in the cistern greatlyvexed at riotous behavior on the part of a large number of animalcules. He was told that Water-Drops had been compelled to come into that place, after undergoing many hardships, and had unavoidably brought with them germs of these annoying creatures. Time and place favoring, nothing could hinder them from coming into life; the cistern was their cradle, although many of them were already anything but babes. Hereupon, Nephelo himself was dashed at by an ugly little fellow like a dragon; but an uglier little fellow, who might be a small Saint George, pounced at the dragon, and the heart of the poor fairy was the scene of contest.
After awhile there was an arrival of fresh water from a pipe, the flow of which stirred up the anger of some decomposing growth which lined the sides and bottom of the cistern. So there was a good deal of confusion caused, and it was some time before all parties settled down into their proper places.
“The sun is very hot,” said Nephelo. “We all seem to be getting very warm.” “Yes, indeed,”said a Lady-Drop; “it’s not like the cool Cloud-Country. I have been poisoned in the Thames, half filtered, and made frowzy by standing, this July weather, in an open reservoir. I’ve travelled in pipes laid too near the surface to be cool, and now am spoiling here. I know if water is not cold it can’t be pleasant.” “Ah,” said an old Drop, with a small eel in one of his eyes; “I don’t wonder at hearing tell that men drink wine, and tea, and beer.” “Talking of beer,” said another, “is it a fact that we’re of no use to the brewers? Our character’s so bad, they can’t rely on us for cooling the worts, and so sink wells, in order to brew all the year round with water cold enough to suit their purposes.” “I know nothing of beer,” said Nephelo; “but I know that if the gentlemen and ladies in this cistern were as cold as they could wish to be, there wouldn’t be so much decomposition going on among them.” “Your turn in, sir,” said a polite Drop, and Nephelo leaped nimbly through the place of exit into a china jug placed ready to receive him. He was conveyed across ahandsome kitchen by a cook, who declared her opinion that the morning’s rain had caused the drains to smell uncommonly. Nephelo then was thrown into a kettle.
Boiling is to an unclean Water-Drop, like scratching to a bear, a pleasant operation. It gets rid of the little animals by which it had been bitten, and throws down some of the impurity with which it had been soiled. So, after boiling, water becomes more pure, but it is, at the same time, more greedy than ever to absorb extraneous matter. Therefore, the sons of men who boil their vitiated water ought to keep it covered afterwards, and if they wish to drink it cold, should lose no time in doing so. Nephelo and his friends within the kettle danced with delight under the boiling process. Chattering pleasantly together, they compared notes of their adventures upon earth, discussed the politics of Cloud-Land, and although it took them nearly twice as long to boil as it would have done had there been no carbonate of lime about them, they were quite sorry when the time was come forthem to part. Nephelo then, with many others, was poured out into an urn. So he was taken to the drawing-room, a hot iron having, in a friendly manner, been put down his back, to keep him boiling.
Out of the urn into the tea-pot; out of the tea-pot into the slop-basin; Nephelo had only time to remark a matron tea-maker, young ladies knitting, and a good-looking young gentleman upon his legs, laying the law down with a tea-spoon, before he (the fairy, not the gentleman) was smothered with a plate of muffins. From so much of the conversation as Nephelo could catch, filtered through muffin, it appeared that they were talking about tea.
“It’s all very well for you to say, mother, that you’re confident you make tea very good, but I ask—no, there I see you put six spoonfuls in for five of us. Mother, if this were not hard water—(here there was a noise as of a spoon hammering upon the iron)—two spoonfuls less would make tea of a better flavor and of equal strength. Now,there are three hundred and sixty-five times and a quarter tea-times in the year ——”
“And how many spoonfuls, brother, to the quarter of a tea-time?”
“Maria, you’ve no head for figures. I say nothing of the tea consumed at breakfast. Multiply——”
“My dear boy, you have left school; no one asks you to multiply. Hand me the muffin.”
Nephelo, released, was unable to look about him, owing to the high walls of the slop-basin which surrounded him on every side. The room was filled with pleasant sunset light, but Nephelo soon saw the coming shadow of the muffin-plate, and all was dark directly afterwards.
“Take cooking, mother. M. Soyer[4]says you can’t boil many vegetables properly in London water. Greens won’t be greens; French beans are tinged with yellow, and peas shrivel. It don’t open the pores of meat, and make it succulent, as softer water does. M. Soyer believes that the trueflavor of meat cannot be extracted with hard water. Bread does not rise so well when made with it. Horses——”
“My dear boy, M. Soyer don’t cook horses.”
“Horses, Dr. Playfair tells us, sheep, and pigeons, will refuse hard water if they can get it soft, though from the muddiest pool. Race-horses, when carried to a place where the water is notoriously hard, have a supply of softer water carried with them to preserve their good condition. Not to speak of gripes, hard water will assuredly produce what people call a staring coat.”
“Ah, no doubt, then, it was London water that created Mr. Blossomley’s blue swallow-tail.”
“Maria, you make nonsense out of everything. When you are Mrs. Blossomley——”
“Now pass my cup.”
There was a pause and a clatter. Presently the muffin-plate was lifted, and four times in succession there were black dregs thrown into the face of Nephelo. After the perpetration of these insults he was once again condemned to darkness.
“When you are Mrs. Blossomley, Maria,” so the voice went on, “when you are Mrs. Blossomley, you will appreciate what I am now going to tell you about washerwomen.”
“Couldn’t you postpone it, dear, until I am able to appreciate it. You promised to take us to Rachel to-night.”
“Ah!” said another girlish voice, “you’ll not escape. We dress at seven. Until then—for the next twelve minutes you may speak. Bore on, we will endure.”
“As for you, Catherine, Maria teaches you, I see, to chatter. But if Mrs. B. would object to the reception of a patent mangle as a wedding present from her brother, she had better hear him now. Washerwoman’s work is not a thing to overlook, I tell you. Before a shirt is worn out, there will have been spent upon it five times its intrinsic value in the washing-tub. The washing of clothes costs more, by a great deal, than the clothes themselves. The yearly cost of washing to a household of the middle class amounts, on the average, toabout a third part of the rental, or a twelfth part of the total income. Among the poor, the average expense of washing will more probably be half the rental if they wash at home, but not more than a fourth of it if they employ the Model Wash-houses. The weekly cost of washing to a poor man averages certainly not less than fourpence halfpenny. Small tradesmen, driven to economize in linen, spend perhaps not more than ninepence; in the middle and upper classes, the cost weekly varies from a shilling to five shillings for each person, and amounts very often to a larger sum. On these grounds, Mr. Bullar, Honorary Secretary to the Association for Promoting Baths and Wash-houses, estimates the washing expenditure of London at a shilling a week for each inhabitant, or, for the whole, five millions of pounds yearly. Professor Clark—”
“My dear Professor Tom, you have consumed four of your twelve minutes.”
“Professor Clark judges from such estimates as can be furnished by the trade, that the consumptionof soap in London is fifteen pounds to each person per annum—twice as much as is employed in other parts of England. That quantity of soap costs six-and-eightpence; water, per head, costs half as much, or three-and-fourpence; or each man’s soap and water costs throughout London, on an average, ten shillings for twelve months. If the hardness of the water be diminished, there is a diminution in the want of soap. For every grain of carbonate of lime dissolved in each gallon of any water, Mr. Donaldson declares two ounces of soap more for a hundred gallons of that water are required. Every such grain is called a degree of hardness. Water of five degrees of hardness requires, for example, two ounces of soap; water of eight degrees of hardness, then will need fifteen; and water of sixteen degrees, will demand thirty-two. Sixteen degrees, Maria, is the hardness of Thames water—of the water, mother, which has poached upon your tea-caddy. You see, then, that when we pay for the soap we use at the rate of six-and-eightpence each, since the unusual hardness of our water causesus to use a double quantity, every man in London pays at an average rate of three-and-fourpence a year his tax for a hard water through the cost of soap alone.”
“Now you must finish in five minutes, brother Tom.”
“But soap is not the only matter that concerns the washerwoman and her customers. There is labor, also, and the wear and tear; there is a double amount of destruction to our linen, involved in the double time of rubbing and the double soaping, which hard water compels washerwomen to employ. So that, when all things have been duly reckoned up in our account, we find that the outlay caused by the necessities for washing linen in a town supplied like London with exceedingly hard water, is four times greater than it would be if soft water were employed. The cost of washing, as I told you, has been estimated at five millions a-year. So that, if these calculations be correct, more than three millions of money, nearly four millions, is the amount filched yearly from theLondoners by their hard water through the wash-tub only. To that sum, Mrs. Blossomley, being of a respectable family and very partial to clean linen, will contribute of course much more than her average proportion.”
“Well, Mr. Orator, I was not listening to all you said, but what I heard I do think much exaggerated.”
“I take it, sister, from the Government Report; oblige me by believing half of it, and still the case is strong. It is quite time for people to be stirring.”
“So it is, I declare. Your twelve minutes are spent, and we will always be ready for the play. If you talk there of water, I will shriek.”
Here there arose a chatter which Nephelo found to be about matters that, unlike the water topic, did not at all interest himself. There was a rustle and a movement; and a creaking noise approached the drawing-room, which Nephelo discovered presently to be caused by papa’s boots as he marched upstairs after his post-prandial slumberings. Therewas more talk uninteresting to the fairy; Nephelo, therefore, became drowsy; his drowsiness might at the same time have been aggravated by the close confinement he experienced in an unwholesome atmosphere beneath the muffin-plate. He was aroused by a great clattering; this the maid caused who was carrying him down stairs upon a tray with all the other tea-things.
From a sweet dream of nuptials with Cirrha, Nephelo was awakened to the painful consciousness that he had not yet succeeded in effecting any great good for the human race; he had but rinsed a teapot. With a faint impulse of hope the desponding fairy noticed that the slop-basin in which he sat was lifted from the tray, in a few minutes after the tray had been deposited upon the kitchen-dresser. Pity poor Nephelo! By a remorseless scullery-maid he was dashed rudely from the basin into a trough of stone, from which he tumbled through a hole placed there on purpose to engulf him,—tumbled through into a horrible abyss.
This abyss was a long dungeon running fromback to front beneath the house, built of bricks—rotten now, and saturated with moisture. Some of the bricks had fallen in, or crumbled into nothingness; and Nephelo saw that the soil without the dungeon was quite wet. The dungeon-floor was coated with pollutions, travelled over by a sluggish shallow stream, with which the fairy floated. The whole dungeon’s atmosphere was foul and poisonous. Nephelo found now what those exhalations were which rose through every opening in the house, through vent-holes and the burrowings of rats; for rats and other venom tenanted this noisome den. This was the pestilential gallery called by the good people of the house, their drain. A trap door at one end confined the fairy in this place with other Water-Drops, until there should be collected a sufficient body of them to negotiate successfully for egress.