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 neighbouring 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
quite 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 pulverised 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, criticised and ridiculed everything that met his
eye. What was the use of such a toolhouse 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 reeds, and
water-flags, and marsh-blossoms, declared the decayed vegetation to be
peat soil, very fine peat, which the ladies would be glad of for their
heaths in the flower-garden,—and thought there must be good fowling here
in winter. Fleming quietly turned over the so-called peat with a stick,
letting it be seen that it was a mere dung-heap of decayed rushes, and
wished Mr. Nelson would come in the fowling season, and see what the
place was like.
“The children are merry enough, however,” observed the gentleman. “They
can laugh here, much as in other places. I advise you to take a lesson
from them, Fleming. Now, don’t you teach them to croak.”
The laughter sounded from the direction of the old brick-ground; and
thither they now turned. Two little boys were on the brink of a pit, so
intent on watching a rat in the water and on pelting it with stones,
that they did not see that anybody was coming to disturb them. In answer
to Mr. Nelson’s question, whether they were vagrants, and why vagrants
were permitted there, Fleming answered that the younger one—the
pale-faced one—was his little brother-in-law; the other—
“Ay, now, you will be telling me next that the pale face is the fault of
this place.”
“It certainly is,” said Fleming. “That child was chubby enough when he
came.”
“Pho, pho! a puny little wretch as ever I saw—puny from its birth, I
have no doubt of it. And who is the other—a gipsy?”
“He looks like it,” replied Fleming. On being questioned, Moss told that
the boy lived near, and he had often played with him lately. Yes, he
lived near, just beyond those trees; not in a house, only a sort of
house the people had made for themselves. Mr. Nelson liked to lecture
vagrants, even more than other people; so Moss was required to show the
way, and his dark-skinned playfellow was not allowed to skulk behind.
Moss led his party on, over the tufty hay-coloured grass, skipping from
bunch to bunch of rushes, round the osier beds, and at last straight
through a clump of alders, behind whose screen now appeared the house,
as Moss had called it, which the gipsies had made for themselves. It was
the tilt of a waggon, serving as a tent. Nobody was visible but a woman,
crouching under the shadow of the tent, to screen from the sun that
which was lying across her lap.
“What is that that she’s nursing? Lord bless me! Can that be a child?”
exclaimed Mr. Nelson.
“A child in the fever,” replied Fleming.
“Lord bless me!—to see legs and arms hang down like that!” exclaimed the
gentleman: and he forthwith gave the woman a lecture on her method of
nursing—scolded her for letting the child get a fever—for not putting it
to bed—for not getting a doctor to it—for being a gipsy, and living
under an alder clump. He then proceeded to inquire whether she had
anybody else in the tent, where her husband was, whether he lived by
thieving, how they would all like being transported, whether she did not
think her children would all be hanged, and so on. At first, the woman
tried a facetious and wheedling tone, then a whimpering one, and,
finally, a scolding one. The last answered well. Mr. Nelson found that a
man, to say nothing of a gentleman, has no chance with a woman with a
sore heart in her breast, and a sick child in her lap, when once he has
driven her to her weapon of the tongue. He said afterwards, that he had
once gone to Billingsgate, on purpose to set two fishwomen quarrelling,
that he might see what it was like. The scene had fulfilled all his
expectations; but he now declared that it could not compare with this
exhibition behind the alders. He stood a long while, first trying to
overpower the woman’s voice; and, when that seemed hopeless, poking
about among the rushes with his stick, and finally, staring in the
woman’s face, in a mood between consternation and amusement:—thus he
stood, waiting till the torrent should intermit; but there was no sign
of intermission; and when the sick child began to move and rouse itself,
and look at the strangers, as if braced by the vigour of its mother’s
tongue, the prospect of an end seemed further off than ever. Mr. Nelson
shrugged his shoulders, signed to his companions, and walked away
through the alders. The woman was not silent because they were out of
sight. Her voice waxed shriller as it followed them, and died away only
in the distance. Moss was grasping Fleming’s hand with all his might
when Mr. Nelson spoke to him, and shook his stick at him, asking him how
he came to play with such people, and saying that if ever he heard him
learning to scold like that woman, he would beat him with that stick: so
Moss vowed he never would.
“When the train was in sight by which Mr. Nelson was to depart, he
turned to Fleming, with the most careless air imaginable, saying,
“Have you any medicine in your house?—any bark?”
“Not any. But I will send for some.”
“Ay, do. Or,—no—I will send you some. See if you can’t get these people
housed somewhere, so that they may not sleep in the swamp. I don’t mean
in any of your houses, but in a barn, or some such place. If the physic
comes before the doctor, get somebody to dose the child. And don’t fancy
you are all going to die of the fever. That is the way to make
yourselves ill: and it is all nonsense, too, I dare say.”
“Do you like that gentleman?” asked Moss, sapiently, when the train was
whirling Mr. Nelson out of sight. “Because I don’t—not at all.”
“I believe he is kinder than he seems, Moss. He need not be so rough:
but I know he does kind things sometimes.”
“But, do you like him?”
“No, I can’t say I do.”
Before many hours were over, Fleming was sorry that he had admitted
this, even to himself; and for many days after he was occasionally heard
telling Moss what a good gentleman Mr. Nelson was, for all his roughness
of manners. With the utmost speed, before it would have been thought
possible, arrived a surgeon from the next town, with medicines, and the
news that he was to come every day while there was any fear of fever.
The gipsies were to have been cared for; but they were gone. The marks
of their fire and a few stray feathers which showed that a fowl had been
plucked, alone told where they had encamped. A neighbour, who loved her
poultry yard, was heard to say that the sick child would not die for
want of chicken broth, she would be bound; and the nearest farmer asked
if they had left any potato-peels and turnip tops for his pig. He
thought that was the least they could do after making their famous gipsy
stew (a capital dish, it was said,) from his vegetables. They were gone;
and if they had not left fever behind, they might be forgiven, for the
sake of the benefit of taking themselves off. After the search for the
gipsies was over, there was still an unusual stir about the place. One
and another stranger appeared and examined the low grounds, and sent for
one and another of the neighbouring proprietors, whether farmer, or
builder, or gardener, or labourer; for every one who owned or rented a
yard of land on the borders of the great ditch, or anywhere near the
clay pits or osier beds. It was the opinion of the few residents near
the Station that something would be done to improve the place before
another year; and everybody said that it must be Mr. Nelson’s doings,
and that it was a thousand pities that he did not come earlier, before
the fever had crept thus far along the line.