running the wheelbarrow, too. It is too much for Allan, or any boy, to
run the barrow in such a soil as this. We’ll have the planks first; and
then we’ll drain, and drain, and get rare spring crops.”
“What have they given you this artificial pond for,” asked the wife, “if
you must drain so much?”
“That is no pond. All the way along here, on both sides the railway,
there is the mischief of these pits. They dig out the clay for bricks,
and then leave the places--pits like this, some of them six feet deep.
The railways have done a deal of good for the poor man, and will do a
great deal more yet; but, at present, this one has left those pits.”
“I hope Moss will not fall into one. They are very dangerous,” declared
the mother, looking about for the child.
“He is safe enough there, among the osiers,” said the father. “He has
lost his heart outright to the osiers. However, I mean to drain and fill
up this pit, when I find a good out-fall; and then we will have all high
and dry, and safe for the children. I don’t care so much for the pit as
for the ditches there. Don’t you notice the bad smell?”
“Yes, indeed, that struck me the first night.”
“I have been inquiring to-day, and I find there is one acre in twenty
hereabouts occupied with foul ditches like that. And then the overflow
from them and the pits, spoils many an acre more. There is a stretch of
water-flags and bulrushes, and nasty coarse grass and rushes, nothing
but a swamp, where the ground is naturally as good as this; and, look
here! Fleming was rather out, I tell him, when he wrote that I might
graze a pony on the pasture below, whenever I have a market-cart. I ask
him if he expects me to water it here.”
So saying, Woodruffe led the way to one of the ditches which, instead of
fences, bounded his land; and, moving the mass of weed with a stick,
showed the water beneath, covered with a whitish bubbling scum, the
smell of which was insufferable.
“There is plenty of manure there,” said Woodruffe; “that is the only
thing that can be said for it. We’ll make manure of it, and sweep out
the ditch, and deepen it, and narrow it, and not use up so many feet of
good ground for a ditch that does nothing but poison us. A fence is
better than a ditch any day. I’ll have a fence, and still save ten feet
of ground, the whole way down.”
“There is a great deal to do here,” observed the wife.
“And good reward when it is done,” Woodruffe replied. “If I can fall in
with a stout laborer, he and Allan and I can get our spring crops
prepared for; and I expect they will prove the goodness of the soil.
There is Fleming. Supper is ready, I suppose.”
The children were called, but both were so wet and dirty that it took
twice as long as usual to make them fit to sit at table; and apologies
were made for keeping supper waiting. The grave half-hour before Moss’s
bed-time was occupied with the most solemn piece of instruction he had
ever had in his life. His father carried him up to the railway, and made
him understand the danger of playing there. He was never to play there.
His father would go up with him once a day, and let him see a train
pass; and this was the only time he was ever to mount the steps, except
by express leave. Moss was put to bed in silence, with his father’s
deep, grave voice, sounding in his ears.
“He will not forget it,” declared his father. “He will give us no
trouble about the railway. The next thing is the pit. Allan, I expect
you to see that he does not fall into the pit. In time, we shall teach
him to take care of himself; but you must remember, meanwhile, that the
pit is six feet deep--deeper than I am high; and that the edge is the
same clay that you slipped on so often this morning.”
“Yes, father,” said Allan, looking as grave as if power of life and
death were in his hands.
III.
One fine morning in the next spring, there was more stir and
cheerfulness about the Woodruffes’ dwelling than there had been of late.
The winter had been somewhat dreary; and now the spring was anxious; for
Woodruffe’s business was not, as yet, doing very well. His hope, when he
bought his pony and cart, was to dispatch by railway to the town the
best of his produce, and sell the commoner part in the country
neighborhood, sending his cart round within the reach of a few miles. As
it turned out, he had nothing yet to send to the town, and his agent
there was vexed and displeased. No radishes, onions, early salads, or
rhubarb were ready, and it would be some time yet before they were.
“I am sure I have done everything I could,” said Woodruffe to Fleming,
as they both lent a hand to put the pony into the cart. “Nobody can say
that I have not made drains enough, or that they are not deep enough;
yet the frost has taken such a hold that one would think we were living
in the north of Scotland, instead of in Staffordshire.”
“It has not been a severe season either,” observed Fleming.
“There’s the vexation,” replied Woodruffe. “If it had been a season
which set us at defiance, and made all sufferers alike, one must just
submit to a loss, and go on again, like one’s neighbors. But, you see,
I am cut out, as my agent says, from the market. Everybody else has
spring vegetables there, as usual. It is no use telling him that I never
failed before. But I know what it is. It is yonder great ditch that does
the mischief.”
“Why, we have nothing to do with that.”
“That is the very reason. If it was mine or yours, do you think I should
not have taken it in hand long ago? All my draining goes for little
while that shallow ditch keeps my ground a continual sop. It is all
uneven along the bottom;--not the same depth for three feet together
anywhere, and not deep enough by two feet in any part. So there it is,
choked up and putrid; and, after an hour or two of rain, my garden gets
such a soaking that the next frost is destruction.”
“I will speak about it again,” said Fleming. “We must have it set right
before next winter.”
“I think we have seen enough of the uselessness of speaking,” replied
Woodruffe, gloomily. “If we tease the gentry any more, they may punish
you for it. I would show them my mind by being off,--throwing up my
bargain at all costs, if I had not put so much into the ground that I
have nothing left to move away with.”
“Don’t be afraid for me,” said Fleming, cheerfully. “It was chiefly my
doing that you came here, and I must try my utmost to obtain fair
conditions for you. We must remember that the benefit of your outlay has
all to come.”
“Yes; I can’t say we have got much of it yet.”
“By next winter,” continued Fleming, “your privet hedges and screens
will have grown up into some use against the frost; and your own
drainage----. Come, come, Allan, my boy! be off! It is getting late.”
Allan seemed to be idling, re-arranging his bunches of small radishes,
and little bundles of rhubarb, in their clean baskets, and improving the
stick with which he was to drive; but he pleaded that he was waiting for
Moss, and for the parcel which his mother was getting ready for Becky.
“Ah I my poor little girl!” said Woodruffe. “Give my love to her, and
tell her it will be a happy day when we can send for her to come home
again. Be sure you observe particularly, to tell us how she looks; and,
mind, if she fancies anything in the cart,--any radishes, or whatever
else, because it comes out of our garden, be sure you give it her. I
wish I was going myself with the cart, for the sake of seeing Becky; but
I must go to work. Here have I been all the while, waiting to see you
off. Ah! here they come! you may always have notice now of who is coming
by that child’s crying.”
“O, father! not always!” exclaimed Allan.
“Far too often, I’m sure. I never knew a child grow so fractious. I am
saying, my dear,” to his wife, who now appeared with her parcel, and
Moss in his best hat, “that boy is the most fractious child we ever had;
and he is getting too old for that to begin now. How can you spoil him
so?”
“I am not aware,” said Mrs. Woodruffe, her eyes filling with tears,
“that I treat him differently from the rest; but the child is not well.
His chilblains tease him terribly, and I wish there may be nothing
worse.”
“Warm weather will soon cure the chilblains, and then I hope we shall
see an end of the fretting.--Now, leave off crying this minute, Moss, or
you don’t go. You don’t see me cry with my rheumatism, and that is worse
than chilblains, I can tell you.”
Moss tried to stifle his sobs, while his mother put more straw into the
cart for him, and cautioned Allan to be careful of him, for it really
seemed as if the child was tender all over. Allan seemed to succeed best
as comforter. He gave Moss the stick to wield, and showed him how to
make believe to whip the pony, so that before they turned the corner,
Moss was wholly engrossed with what he called driving.
“Yes, yes,” said Woodruffe, as he turned away to go to the garden,
“Allan is the one to manage, him. He can take as good care of him as any
woman without spoiling him!”
Mrs. Woodruffe submitted to this in silence; but with the feeling that
she did not deserve it.
Becky had had no notice of this visit from her brothers; but no such
visit could take her by surprise; for she was thinking of her family all
day long, every day, and fancying she should see them whichever way she
turned. It was not her natural destination to be a servant in a
farm-house; she had never expected it,--never been prepared for it. She
was as willing to work as any girl could be; and her help in the
gardening was beyond what most women are capable of; but it was a bitter
thing to her to go among strangers, and toil for them, when she knew
that she was wanted at home by father and mother, and brothers, and just
at present by her sister too; for Mrs. Fleming’s confinement was to
happen this spring. The reason why Becky was not at home while so much
wanted there was, that there really was no accommodation for her. The
plan of sleeping all huddled together as they were at first would not
do. The girl herself could not endure it; and her parents felt that she
must be got out at any sacrifice. They had inquired diligently till they
found a place for her in a farm-house, where the good wife promised
protection, and care, and kindness; and fulfilled her promise to the
best of her power.
“I hope they do well by you here, Becky,” asked Allan, when the surprise
caused by his driving up with a dash had subsided, and everybody had
retired, to leave Becky with her brothers for the few minutes they could
stay. “I hope they are kind to you here.”
“O, yes,--very kind. And I am sure you ought to say so to father and
mother.”
Becky had jumped into the cart, and had her arms round Moss, and her
head on his shoulder. Raising her head, and with her eyes filling as she
spoke, she inquired anxiously how the new cottages went on, and when
father and mother were to have a home of their own again. She owned, but
did not wish her father and mother to hear of it, that she did not like
being among such rough people as the farm servants. She did not like
some of the behavior that she saw; and, still less, such talk as she was
obliged to overhear. When _would_ a cottage be ready for them?
“Why, the new cottages would soon be getting on now,” Allan said; but he
didn’t know, nobody fancied the look of them. He saw them just after the
foundations were laid; and the enclosed parts were like a clay-puddle.
He did not see how they were ever to be improved; for the curse of wet
seemed to be on them, as upon everything about the Station. Fleming’s
cottage was the best he had seen, after all, if only it was twice as
large. If anything could be done to make the new cottages what cottages
should be, it would be done: for everybody agreed that the railway
gentlemen desired to do the best for their people, and to set an example
in that respect; but it was beyond anybody’s power to make wet clay as
healthy as warm gravel. Unless they could go to work first to dry the
soil, it seemed a hopeless sort of affair.
“But, I say, Becky,” pursued Allan, “you know about my garden--that
father gave me a garden of my own.”
Becky’s head was turned quite away; and she did not look round, when she
replied,
“Yes; I remember. How does your garden get on?”
There was something in her voice which made her brother lean over and
look into her face; and, as he expected, tears were running down her
cheeks.
“There now!” said he, whipping the back of the cart with his stick;
“something must be done, if you can’t get on here.”
“O! I can get on. Be sure you don’t tell mother that I can’t get on, or
anything about it.”
“You look healthy, to be sure.”
“To be sure I am. Don’t say any more about it. Tell me about your
garden.”
“Well: I am trying what I can make of it, after I have done working with
father. But it takes a long time to bring it round.”
“What! is the wet there, too?”
“Lord, yes! The wet was beyond everything at first. I could not leave
the spade in the ground ten minutes, if father called me, but the water
was standing in the hole when I went back again. It is not so bad now,
since I made a drain to join upon father’s principal one; and father
gave me some sand, and plenty of manure; but it seems to us that manure
does little good. It won’t sink in when the ground is so wet.”
“Well, there will be the summer next, and that will dry up your garden.”
“Yes. People say the smells are dreadful in hot weather, though. But we
seem to get used to that. I thought it sickly work, just after we came,
going down to get osiers, and digging near the big ditch that is our
plague now: but somehow, it does not strike me now as it did then,
though Fleming says it is getting worse every warm day. But come--I must
be off. What will you help yourself to? And don’t forget your parcel.”
Becky’s great anxiety was to know when her brothers would come again. O!
very often, she was assured--oftener and oftener as the vegetables came
forward; whenever there were either too many or too few to send to the
town by rail.
After Becky had jumped down, the farmer and one of the men were seen to
be contemplating the pony.
“What have you been giving your pony lately?” asked the farmer of Allan.
“I ask as a friend, having some experience of this part of the country.
Have you been letting him graze?”
“Yes, in the bit of meadow that we have leave for. There is a good deal
of grass there, now. He has been grazing there these three weeks.”
“On the meadow where the osier beds are? Ay! I knew it by the look of
him. Tell your father that if he does not take care, his pony will have
the staggers in no time. An acquaintance of mine grazed some cattle
there once; and in a week or two, they were all feverish, so that the
butcher refused them on any terms; and I have seen more than one horse
in the staggers, after grazing in marshes of that sort.”
“There is fine thick grass there, and plenty of it,” said Allan, who did
not like that anybody but themselves should criticise their new place
and plans.
“Ay, ay; I know,” replied the farmer. “But if you try to make hay of
that grass, you’ll be surprised to find how long it takes to make, and
how like wool it comes out at last. It is a coarse grass, with no
strength in it; and it must be a stronger beast than this that will bear
feeding on it. Just do you tell your father what I say, that’s all; and
then he can do as he pleases; but I would take a different way with that
pony, without loss of time, if it was mine.”
Allan did not much like taking this sort of message to his father, who
was not altogether so easy to please as he used to be. If anything vexed
him ever so little, he always began to complain of his rheumatism--and
he now complained of his rheumatism many times in a day. It was managed,
however, by tacking a little piece of amusement and pride upon it. Moss
was taught, all the way as they went home, after selling their
vegetables, how much everything sold for; and he was to deliver the
money to his father, and go through his lesson as gravely as any big
man. It succeeded very well. Everybody laughed. Woodruffe called the
child his little man-of-business; gave him a penny out of the money he
brought; and when he found that the child did not like jumping as he
used to do, carried him up to the railway to listen for the whistle, and
see the afternoon train come up, and stop a minute, and go on again.
IV.
Fleming did what he could to find fair play for his father-in-law. He
spoke to one and another--to the officers of the railway, and to the
owners of neighboring plots of ground, about the bad drainage, which was
injuring everybody; but he could not learn that anything was likely to
be done. The ditch--the great evil of all--had always been there, he
was told, and people never used to complain of it. When Fleming pointed
out that it was at first a comparatively deep ditch, and that it grew
shallower every year from the accumulations formed by its uneven bottom,
there were some who admitted that it might be as well to clean it out;
yet nobody set about it. And it was truly a more difficult affair now
than it would have been at an earlier time. If the ditch was shallower,
it was much wider. It had once been twelve feet wide, and it was now
eighteen. When any drain had been flowing into it, or after a rainy day,
the contents spread through and over the soil on each side, and softened
it, and then the next time any horse or cow came to drink, the whole
bank was made a perfect bog; for the poor animals, however thirsty,
tried twenty places to find water that they could drink before going
away in despair. Such was the bar in the way of poor Woodruffe’s success
with his ground. Before the end of summer his patience was nearly worn
out. During a showery and gleamy May and a pleasant June, he had gone
on as prosperously as he could expect under the circumstances; and he
confidently anticipated that a seasonable July and August would set him
up. But he had had no previous experience of the peculiarities of
ill-drained land; and the hot July and August, from which he hoped so
much, did him terrible mischief. The drought which would have merely
dried and pulverized a well-drained soil, leaving it free to profit much
by small waterings, baked the overcharged soil of Woodruffe’s garden
into hard hot masses of clay, amidst which his produce died off faster
and faster every day, even though he and all his family wore out their
strength with constant watering. He did hope, he said, that he should
have been spared drought at least; but it seemed as if he was to have
every plague in turn; and the drought seemed, at the time, to be the
worst of all.
One day Fleming saw a welcome face in one of the carriages; Mr. Nelson,
a director of the railway, who was looking along the line to see how
matters went. Though Mr. Nelson was not exactly the one, of all the
directors, whom Fleming would have chosen to appeal to, he saw that the
opportunity must not be lost; and he entreated him to alight, and stay
for the next train.
“Eh! what!” said Mr. Nelson; “what can you want with us here? A station
like this! Why, one has to put on spectacles to see it!”
“If you would come down, sir, I should be glad to show you....”
“Well; I suppose I must.”
As they were standing on the little platform, and the train was growing
smaller in the distance, Fleming proceeded to business. He told of the
serious complaints that were made for a distance of a few miles on
either hand, of the clay pits left by the railway brickmakers, to fill
with stagnant waters.
“Pho! pho! Is that what you want to say?” replied Mr. Nelson. “You need
not have stopped me just to tell me that. We hear of those pits all
along the line. We are sick of hearing of them.”
“That does not mend the matter in this place,” observed Fleming. “I
speak freely, sir, but I think it my duty to say that something must be
done. I heard a few days ago, more than the people hereabouts
know,--much more than I shall tell them--of the fever that has settled
on particular points of our line; and I now assure you, sir, that if the
fever once gets a hold in this place, I believe it may carry us all off
before anything can be done. Sir, there is not one of us within half a
mile of the station that has a wholesome dwelling.”
“Pho! pho! you are a croaker,” declared Mr. Nelson. “Never saw such a
dismal fellow! Why, you will die of fright, if ever you die of
anything.”
“Then, sir, will you have the goodness to walk round with me, and see
for yourself what you think of things. It is not only for myself and my
family that I speak. In an evil day I induced my wife’s family to settle
here, and....”
“Ay! that is a nice garden,” observed Mr. Nelson, as Fleming pointed to
Woodruffe’s land. “You are a croaker, Fleming. I declare I think the
place is much improved since I saw it last. People would not come and
settle here if the place was like what you say.”
Instead of arguing the matter, Fleming led the way down the long flight
of steps. He was aware that leading the gentleman among bad smells and
over shoes in a foul bog would have more effect than any argument was
ever known to have on his contradictious spirit.
“You should have seen worse things than these, and then you would not be
so discontented,” observed Mr. Nelson, striking his stick upon the
hard-baked soil, all intersected with cracks. “I have seen such a soil
as this in Spain, some days after a battle, when there were scores of
fingers and toes sticking up out of the cracks. What would you say to
that?--eh?”
“We may have a chance of seeing that here,” replied Fleming; “if the
plague comes, and comes too fast for the coffin-makers,--a thing which
has happened more than once in England, I believe.”
Mr. Nelson stopped to laugh; but he certainly attended more to business
as he went on; and Fleming, who knew something of his ways, had hopes
that if he could only keep his own temper, this visit of the director
might not be without good results.
In passing through Woodruffe’s garden, very nice management was
necessary. Woodruffe was at work there, charged with ire against railway
directors and landed proprietors, whom, amidst the pangs of his
rheumatism, he regarded as the poisoners of his land and the bane of his
fortunes; while, on the other hand, Mr. Nelson, who had certainly never
been a market gardener, criticized and ridiculed everything that met his
eye. What was the use of such a tool-house as that?--big enough for a
house for them all. What was the use of such low fences?--of such high
screens?--of making the walks so wide?--sheer waste?--of making the beds
so long one way, and so narrow another?--of planting or sowing this and
that?--things that nobody wanted. Woodruffe had pushed back his hat in
preparation for a defiant reply, when Fleming caught his eye, and, by a
good-tempered smile, conveyed to him that they had an oddity to deal
with. Allan, who had begun by listening reverently, was now looking from
one to another in great perplexity.
“What is that boy here for, staring like a dunce? Why don’t you send him
to school? You neglect a parent’s duty if you don’t send him to school.”
Woodruffe answered by a smile of contempt, walked away, and went to work
at a distance.
“That boy is very well taught,” Fleming said, quietly. “He is a great
reader, and will soon be fit to keep his father’s accounts.”
“What does he stare in that manner for, then? I took him for a dunce.”
“He is not accustomed to hear his father called in question, either as a
gardener or a parent.”
“Pho! pho! I might as well have waited, though, till he was out of
hearing. Well, is this all you have to show me? I think you make a great
fuss about nothing.”
“Will you walk this way?” said Fleming, turning down towards the osier
beds, without any compassion for the gentleman’s boots or olfactory
nerves. For a long while Mr. Nelson affected to admire the reed, and
water-flags, and marsh-blossoms, declared the decayed vegetation to be
peat soil, very fine peat, which the ladies would be glad of for their
heaths in the flower-garden,--and thought there must be good fowling
here in winter. Fleming quietly turned over the so-called peat with a
stick, letting it be seen that it was a mere dung-heap of decayed
rushes, and wished Mr. Nelson would come in the fowling season, and see
what the place was like.
“The children are merry enough, however,” observed the gentleman. “They
can laugh here, much as in other places. I advise you to take a lesson
from them, Fleming. Now, don’t you teach them to croak.”