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 changes _sides_
oftener 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 is the
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 no _fracas_ disturb 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 the _genius loci_ had 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 adjudging
the 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 human nature, that we suspect this abnegation of comfort
will not long survive the honeymoon. The French, ever enamored of
effect, and who, we verily believe, even _sleep_, “_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 at her 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 keeps
Watch! while in slumbers light
She sleeps
My lady sleeps!
Sleeps!”
VI.
The Home of Woodruffe the Gardener.
I.
“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, whom he 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 removal opened. 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’ distance a 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; and osier-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.
II.
“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 the beginning; 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 be
seen 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 how sleepy 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 one corner, 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 hopes that 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 the young 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 gone at 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.”