“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.”

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 gypsy?”

“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-colored grass, skipping from bunch to bunch of rushes, round the osier-beds, and at last straight through a clump of elders, behind whose screen now appeared the house, as Moss had called it, which the gypsies had made for themselves. It was the tilt of a wagon, 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 gypsy, 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 fisherwomen 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 vigor of its mother’s tongue, the prospect of an end seemed farther 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 means, 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 gypsies 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 neighbor, 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 gypsy 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 gypsies 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 neighboring proprietors, whether farmer, or builder, or gardener, or laborer; 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.

V

For some months past, Becky had believed without a doubt, that the day of her return home would be the very happiest day of her life. She was too young to know yet that it is not for us to settle which of our days shall be happy ones, nor what events shall yield us joy. The promise had not been kept that she should return when her father and mother removed into the new cottage. She had been told that there really was not, even now, decent room for them all; and that they must at least wait till the hot weather was completely over before they crowded the chamber, as they had hitherto done. And then, when autumn came on, and the creeping mists from the low grounds hung round the place from sunset till after breakfast the next day, the mother delayed sending for her daughter, unwilling that she should lose the look of health which she alone now, of all the family, exhibited. Fleming and his wife and babe prospered better than the others. The young man’s business lay on the high ground, at the top of the embankment. He was there all day while Mr. Woodruffe and Allan were below, among the ditches and the late and early fogs. Mrs. Fleming was young and strong, full of spirit and happiness; and so far fortified against the attacks of disease, as a merry heart strengthens nerve and bone and muscle, and invigorates all the vital powers. In regard to her family, her father’s hopeful spirit seemed to have passed into her. While he was becoming permanently discouraged, she was always assured that everything would come right next year. The time had arrived for her power of hope to be tested to the utmost. One day this autumn, she admitted that Becky must be sent for. She did not forget, however, to charge Allan to be cheerful, and make the best of things, and not frighten Becky by the way.

It was now the end of October. Some of the days were balmy elsewhere – the afternoons ruddy; the leaves crisp beneath the tread; the squirrel busy after the nuts in the wood; the pheasants splendid among the dry ferns in the brake, the sportsman warm and thirsty in his exploring among the stubble. In the evenings the dwellers in country houses called one another out upon the grass, to see how bright the stars were, and how softly the moonlight slept upon the woods. While it was thus in one place, in another, and not far off, all was dank, dim, dreary and unwholesome; with but little sun, and no moon or stars; all chill, and no glow; no stray perfumes, the last of the year, but sickly scents coming on the steam from below. Thus it was about Fleming’s house, this latter end of October, when he saw but little of his wife, because she was nursing her mother in the fever, and when he tried to amuse himself with his young baby at meal-times (awkward nurse as he was) to relieve his wife of the charge for the little time he could be at home. When the baby cried, and when he saw his Abby look wearied, he did wish, now and then, that Becky was at home; but he was patient, and helpful, and as cheerful as he could be, till the day which settled the matter. On that morning he felt strangely weak, barely able to mount the steps to the station. During the morning, several people told him he looked ill; and one person did more. The porter sent a message to the next large Station that somebody must be sent immediately to fill Fleming’s place, in case of his being too ill to work. Somebody came; and before that, Fleming was in bed – certainly down in the fever. His wife was now wanted at home; and Becky must come to her mother.

Though Becky asked questions all the way home, and Allan answered them as truthfully as he knew how, she was not prepared for what she found – her father aged and bent, always in pain, more or less, and far less furnished with plans and hopes than she had ever known him; Moss, fretful and sickly, and her mother unable to turn herself in her bed. Nobody mentioned death. The surgeon who came daily, and told Becky exactly what to do, said nothing of anybody dying of the fever, while Woodruffe was continually talking of things that were to be done when his wife got well again. It was sad, and sometimes alarming, to hear the strange things that Mrs. Woodruffe said in the evenings when she was delirious; but if Abby stepped in at such times, she did not think much of it, did not look upon it as any sign of danger; and was only thankful that her husband had no delirium. His head was always clear, she said, though he was very weak. Becky never doubted, after this, that her mother was the most severely ill of the two; and she was thunderstruck when she heard one morning the surgeon’s answers to her father’s questions about Fleming. He certainly considered it a bad case; he would not say that he could not get through; but he must say it was contrary to his expectation. When Becky saw her father’s face as he turned away and went out, she believed his heart was broken.

“But I thought,” said she to the surgeon, “I thought my mother was most ill of the two.”

“I don’t know that,” was the reply, “but she is very ill. We are doing the best we can. You are, I am sure,” he said, kindly; “and we must hope on, and do our best till a change comes. The wisest of us do not know what changes may come. But I could not keep your father in ignorance of what may happen in the other house.”

No appearances alarmed Abby. Because there was no delirium, she apprehended no danger. Even when the fatal twitchings came, the arm twitching as it lay upon the coverlid, she did not know it was a symptom of anything. As she nursed her husband perfectly well, and could not have been made more prudent and watchful by any warning, she had no warning. Her cheerfulness was encouraged, for her infant’s sake, as well as for her husband’s and her own. Some thought that her husband knew his own case. A word or two, – now a gesture, and now a look, – persuaded the surgeon and Woodruffe that he was aware that he was going. His small affairs were always kept settled; he had probably no directions to give; and his tenderness for his wife showed itself in his enjoying her cheerfulness to the last. When, as soon as it was light, one December morning, Moss was sent to ask if Abby could possibly come for a few minutes, because mother was worse, he found his sister alone, looking at the floor, her hands on her lap, though her baby was fidgetting in its cradle. Fleming’s face was covered, and he lay so still that Moss, who had never seen death, felt sure that all was over. The boy hardly knew what to do; and his sister seemed not to hear what he said. The thought of his mother, – that Abby’s going might help or save her, – moved him to act. He kissed Abby, and said she must please go to mother; and he took the baby out of the cradle, and wrapped it up, and put it into its mother’s arms; and fetched Abby’s bonnet, and took her cloak down from its peg, and opened the door for her, saying, that he would stay and take care of everything. His sister went without a word; and, as soon as he had closed the door behind her, Moss sank down on his knees before the chair where she had been sitting, and hid his face there till some one came for him, – to see his mother once more before she died.

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.

VI

“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 spoke cheerfully 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.