Pearl-Fishing; Choice Stories from Dickens' Household Words; Second Series

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.

“Keep a school?” exclaimed Woodruffe, looking round at Abby.

“Yes, father,” said Abby, raising her head. “That seems to be a thing that I can do; and it will be good for me to have something to do. Becky is the stoutest of us all, and…”

“I wonder how long that will last,” groaned the father.

“I am quite stout now,” said Becky; “and I am the one to help Allan with the garden. Allan and I will work under your direction, father, while your rheumatism lasts; and…”

“And what am I to do?” asked Moss, pushing himself in.

“You shall fetch and carry the tools,” said Becky; “that is, when the weather is fine, and when your chilblains are not very bad. And you shall be bird-boy when the sowing season comes on.”

“And we are going to put up a pent-house for you, in one corner, you know, Moss,” said his brother. “And we will make it so that there shall be room for a fire in it, where father and you may warm yourselves, and always have dry shoes ready.”

“I wonder what our shoe leather will have cost us by the time the spring comes,” observed Woodruffe. “There is not a place where we ever have to take the cart or the barrow that is not all mire and ruts; not a path in the whole garden that I call a decent one. Our shoes are all pulled to pieces; while the frost, or the fog, or something or other, prevents our getting any real work done. The waste is dreadful. Nothing should have made me take a garden where none but summer crops are to be had, if I could have foreseen such a thing. I never saw such a thing before, – never – as market-gardening without winter and spring crops. Never heard of such a thing!”

Becky glanced towards Allan, to see if he had nothing to propose. If they could neither mend the place nor leave it, it did seem a hard case. Allan was looking into the fire, musing. When Moss announced that the rain was over, Allan started, and said he must be fetching some of Abby’s things down, if it was fair. Becky really meant to help him; but she also wanted opportunity for consultation, as to whether it could really be God’s will that they should neither be able to mend their condition nor to escape from it. As they mounted the long flight of steps, they saw Mr. Nelson issue from the Station, looking about him to ascertain if the rain was over, and take his stand on the embankment, followed by a gentleman who had a roll of paper in his hand. As they stood, the one was seen to point with his stick, and the other with his roll of paper, this way and that. Allan set off in that direction, saying to his sister, as he went,

“Don’t you come. That gentleman is so rude, he will make you cry. Yes, I must go, and I won’t get angry; I won’t indeed. He may find as much fault as he pleases; I must show him how the water is standing in our furrows.”

“Hallo! what do you want here?” was Mr. Nelson’s greeting, when, after a minute or two, he saw Allan looking and listening. “What business have you here, hearkening to what we are saying?”

“I wanted to know whether anything is going to be done below there. I thought, if you wished it, I could tell you something about it.”

“You! what, a dainty little fellow like you? – a fellow that wears his Sunday clothes on a Tuesday, and a rainy Tuesday too! You must get working clothes and work.”

“I shall work to-morrow, Sir. My mother and my brother-in-law were buried to-day.”

“Lord bless me! You should have told me that. How should I know that unless you told me?” He proceeded in a much gentler tone, however, merely remonstrating with Allan for letting the wet stand in the furrows, in such a way as would spoil any garden. Allan had a good ally, all the while, in the stranger, who seemed to understand everything before it was explained. The gentleman was, in fact, an agricultural surveyor – one who could tell, when looking abroad from a height, what was swamp and what meadow; where there was a clean drain, and where an uneven ditch; where the soil was likely to be watered, and where flooded by the winter rains; where genially warmed, and where fatally baked by the summer’s sun. He had seen, before Allan pointed it out, how the great ditch cut across between the cultivated grounds and the little river into which those grounds should be drained; but he could not know, till told by Allan, who were the proprietors and occupiers of the parcels of land lying on either side the ditch. Mr. Nelson knew little or nothing under this head, though he contradicted the lad every minute; was sure such an one did not live here, nor another there; told him he was confusing Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown; did not believe a word of Mr. Taylor having bought yonder meadow, or Mrs. Scott now renting that field. All the while, the surveyor went on setting down the names as Allan told them; and then observed that they were not so many but that they might combine, if they would, to drain their properties, if they could be relieved of the obstruction of the ditch – if the surveyor of highways would see that the ditch were taken in hand. Mr. Nelson pronounced that there should be no difficulty about the ditch, if the rest could be managed; and then, after a few whispered words between the gentlemen, Allan was asked first, whether he was sure that he knew where every person lived whose name was down in the surveyor’s book; and next, whether he would act as guide to-morrow. For a moment he thought he should be wanted to move Abby’s things; but, remembering the vast importance of the plan which seemed now to be fairly growing under his eye, he replied that he would go; he should be happy to make it his day’s work to help, ever so little, towards what he wished above everything in the world.

“What makes you in such a hurry to suppose we want to get a day’s work out of you for nothing?” asked Mr. Nelson. He thrust half-a-crown into the lad’s waistcoat pocket, saying that he must give it back again, if he led the gentleman wrong. The gentleman had no time to go running about the country on a fool’s errand; Allan must mind that. As Allan touched his hat, and ran down the steps, Mr. Nelson observed that boys with good hearts did not fly about in that way, as if they were merry, on the day of their mother’s funeral.

“Perhaps he is rather thinking of saving his father,” observed the surveyor.

“Well; save as many of them as you can. They seem all going to pot as it is.”

When Allan burst in, carrying nothing of Abby’s, but having a little color in his cheeks for once, his father sat up in his chair, the baby suddenly stopped crying, and Moss asked where he had been. At first, his father disappointed him by being listless – first refusing to believe anything good, and then saying that any good that could happen now was too late; and Abby could not help crying all the more because this was not thought about a year sooner. It was her poor husband that had made the stir; and now they were going to take his advice the very day that he was laid in his grave. They all tried to comfort her, and said how natural it was that she should feel it so; yet, amidst all their sympathy, they could not help being cheered that something was to be done at last.

By degrees, and not slow degrees, Woodruffe became animated. It was surprising how many things he desired Allan to be sure not to forget to point out to the surveyor, and to urge upon those he was to visit. At last he said he would go himself. It was a very serious business, and he ought to make an effort to have it done properly. It was a great effort, but he would make it. Not rheumatism, nor anything else, should keep him at home. Allan was glad at heart to see such signs of energy in his father, though he might feel some natural disappointment at being left at home, and some perplexity as to what, in that case, he ought to do about the half-crown, if Mr. Nelson should be gone home. The morning settled this, however. The surveyor was in his gig. If Allan could hang on, or keep up with it, it would be very well, as he would be wanted to open the gates, and to lead the way in places too wet for his father, who was not worth such a pair of patent waterproof tall boots as the surveyor had on.

The circuit was not a very wide one; yet it was dark before they got home. There are always difficulties in arrangements which require combined action. Here there were different levels in the land, and different tempers and views among the occupiers. Mr. Brown had heard nothing about the matter, and could not be hurried till he saw occasion. Mr. Taylor liked his field best, wet – would not have it drier on any account, for fear of the summer sun. When assured that drought took no hold on well-dried land in comparison with wet land, he shook with laughter, and asked if they expected him to believe that. Mrs. Scott, whose combination with two others was essential to the drainage of three portions, would wait another year. They must go on without her; and after another year, she would see what she would do. Another had drained his land in his own way long ago, and did not expect that anybody would ask him to put his spade into another man’s land, or to let any other man put his spade into his. These were all the obstructions. Everybody else was willing, or at least, not obstructive. By clever management, it was thought that the parties concerned could make an island of Mrs. Scott and her field, and win over Mr. Brown by the time he was wanted, and show Mr. Taylor that, as his field could no longer be as wet as it had been, he might as well try the opposite condition – they promising to flood his field as often and as thoroughly as he pleased, if he found it the worse for being drained. They could not obtain all they wished, where everybody was not as wise as could be wished; but so much was agreed upon as made the experienced surveyor think that the rest would follow; enough, already, to set more laborers to work than the place could furnish. Two or three stout men were sent from a distance; and when they had once cut a clear descent from the ditch to the river, and had sunk the ditch to seven feet deep, and made the bottom even, and narrowed it to three feet, it was a curious thing to see how ready the neighbors became to unite their drains with it. It used to be said, that here – however it might be elsewhere – the winter was no time for digging; but that must have meant that no winter-digging would bring a spring crop; and that therefore it was useless. Now, the sound of the spade never ceased for the rest of the winter; and the laborers thought it the best winter they had ever known for constant work. Those who employed the labor hoped it would answer – found it expensive – must trust it was all right, and would yield a profit by and by. As for the Woodruffes, they were too poor to employ laborers. But some little hope had entered their hearts again, and brought strength, not only to their hearts, but to their very limbs. They worked like people beginning the world. As poor Abby could keep the house and sew, while attending to her little school, Becky did the lighter parts (and some which were far from light) of the garden work, finding easy tasks for Moss; and Allan worked like a man at the drains. They had been called good drains before; but now, there was an outfall for deeper ones; and deeper they must be made. Moreover, a strong rivalry arose among the neighbors about their respective portions of the combined drainage; and under the stimulus of ambition, Woodruffe recovered his spirits and the use of his limbs wonderfully. He suffered cruelly from his rheumatism; and in the evenings felt as if he could never more lift a spade; yet, not the less was he at work again in the morning, and so sanguine as to the improvement of his ground, that it was necessary to remind him, when calculating his gains, that it would take two years, at least, to prove the effects of his present labors.

VII

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 labor 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 labor. 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 labor.”

“Just so; and therefore,” continued Woodruffe, “I am thinking of sending for Harry. Our old neighborhood 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 neighborhood; 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 into 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 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 labor I laid out at the time of the drainage. But when I have partly repaid myself, the rent will rise to £5; 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.”