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
labour 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 employing now on the best part of
their land,” said Allan; “that is, when they can get the labour. 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 labour.”
“Just so; and therefore,” continued Woodruffe, “I am thinking of sending
for Harry. Our old neighbourhood 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 neighbourhood; 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 in 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_l._ 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 labour I laid out
at the time of the drainage. But when I have partly repaid myself, the
rent will rise to 5_l._; 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 can eat, 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 labour 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 pulverised, 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 for
them,—to save doctors’ bills and loss of time from sickness;—and, when
once a system of house-drainage is set agoing, 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 good mind to
write to Harry to-day. What do you think,—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 age should 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 gipsy playfellow
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 cartload of
vegetables lay cut for sale; and what an arbour 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 himself of 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 been thieves 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 arbour; 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 gipsy boy, with a dark lantern hung round his
neck, and, at the same moment, to show the gipsy 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, I
say, 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 gipsies 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
gipsy 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 neighbourhood: and
with this pleasant prospect before 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 gipsy-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 or more 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 gipsies, 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 labour! 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 to the 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 gipsy-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, and so 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-yard or
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 harbour so much vermin, that the gipsies 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 gipsies was
edifying. Woodruffe fancied he saw some finger-talk passing, the while,
though the gipsies 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 this brought the lecture to an
abrupt conclusion. On his finishing off with, “I expect, therefore, that
you will remember my advice, and never show your faces 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 it was gone. It had no doubt paid for the gipsies’
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.