might do so, while isolation was a sort of helplessness. To this he agreed, saying, 'I must free him before I go back.'
'And do you really want to go back?' said I, fearing he was growing restless.
His face worked, and he said, 'When I feel like a stone round Eustace's neck.'
'Why should you feel so? You are a lever to lift him.'
'Am I? The longer I live with you, the more true it seems to me that I had no business to come into a world with such people in it as you and Miss Tracy.'
Eustace came back, fidgeting to get a pen mended, an operation beyond him, but patiently performed by the stronger fingers. We said no more, but I had had a glimpse which made me hope that the pilgrim was beginning to feel the burthen on his back.
Not that he had much time for thought. He was out all day, looking after the potteries, where orders were coming in fast, and workmen increasing, and likewise toiling in the fields at Ogden's farm, making measurements and experiments on the substrata and the waterfall, on which to base his plans for drainage according to the books Lord Erymanth had lent him.
After the second day he came home half-laughing. Farmer Ogden had warned him off and refused to listen to any explanation, though he must have known whom he was expelling--yes, like a very village Hampden, he had thrust the unwelcome surveyor out at his gate with such a trembling, testy, rheumatic arm, that Harold had felt obliged to obey it.
Eustace, angered at the treatment of his cousin, volunteered to come and 'tell the ass, Ogden, to mind what he was about,' and Harold added, 'If you would come, Lucy, you might help to make his wife understand.'
I came, as I was desired, where I had never been before, for we had always rested in the belief that the Alfy Valley was a nasty, damp, unhealthy place, with 'something always about,' and had contented ourselves with sending broth to the cottages whenever we heard of any unusual amount of disease. If we had ever been there!
We rode the two miles, as I do not think Dora and I would ever have floundered through the mud and torrents that ran down the lanes. It was just as if the farm had been built in the lower circle, and the cottages in Malebolge itself, where the poor little Alfy, so pure when it started from Kalydon Moor, brought down to them all the leakage of that farmyard. Oh! that yard, I never beheld, imagined, or made my way through the like, though there was a little causeway near the boundary wall, where it was possible to creep along on the stones, rousing up a sleeping pig or a dreamy donkey here and there, and barked at in volleys by dogs stationed on all the higher islets in the unsavoury lake. If Dora had not been a colonial child, and if I could have feared for myself with Harold by my side, I don't think we should ever have arrived, but Farmer Ogden and his son came out, and a man and boy or two; and when Eustace was recognised, they made what way they could for us, and we were landed at last in a scrupulously clean kitchen with peat fire and a limeash floor, where, alas! we were not suffered to remain, but were taken into a horrid little parlour, with a newly-lighted, smoking fire, a big Bible, and a ploughing-cup. Mrs. Ogden was a dissenter, so we had really no acquaintance, and, poor thing, had long been unable to go anywhere. She was a pale trembling creature, most neat and clean, but with the dreadful sallow complexion given by perpetual ague. She was very civil, and gave us cake and wine, to the former of which Dora did ample justice, but oh! the impracticability of those people!
The men had it all out of doors, but when I tried my eloquence on Mrs. Ogden I found her firmly persuaded not only that her own ill health and the sickness in the hamlet were 'the will of the Lord,' but in her religious fatalism, that it was absolutely profane to think that cleansing and drainage would amend them; and she adduced texts which poor uninstructed I was unable to answer, even while I knew they were a perversion; and, provoked as I was, I felt that her meek patience and resignation might be higher virtues than any to which I had yet attained.
Her husband, who, I should explain, was but one remove above a smock- frock farmer, took a different line. He had unsavoury proverbs in which he put deep faith. 'Muck was the mother of money,' and also 'Muck was the farmer's nosegay.' He viewed it as an absolute effeminacy to object to its odorous savours; and as to the poor people, 'they were an ungrateful lot, and had a great deal too much done for them,' the small farmer's usual creed. Mr. Alison could do as he liked, of course, but his lease had five years yet to run, and he would not consent to pay no more rent, not for what he didn't ask for, nor didn't want, and Mr. Bullock didn't approve of--that he would not, not if Mr. Alison took the law of him.
His landlord do it at his own expense? That made him look knowing. He was evidently certain that it was a trick for raising the rent at the end of the lease, if not before, upon him, whose fathers had been tenants of Alfy Vale even before the Alisons came to Arghouse; and, with the rude obstinacy of his race, he was as uncivil to Harold as he durst in Eustace's presence. 'He had no mind to have his fields cut up just to sell the young gentleman's drain- pipes, as wouldn't go off at them potteries.'
'Well, but all this stuff would be doing much more good upon your fields than here,' Eustace said. 'I--I really must insist on this farmyard being cleansed.'
'You'll not find that in the covenant, sir,' said the farmer with a grin.
'But, father,' began the son, a more intelligent-looking man, though with the prevailing sickly tint.
'Hold your tongue, Phil,' said Ogden. 'It's easy to talk of cleaning out the yard; I'd like to see the gentleman set about it, or you either, for that matter.'
'Would you?' said Harold. 'Then you shall.'
Farmer Ogden gaped. 'I won't have no strange labourers about the place.'
'No more you shall,' said Harold. 'If your son and I clean out this place with our own hands in the course of a couple of days, putting the manure in any field you may appoint, will you let the drainage plans be carried out without opposition ?'
'It ain't a bet?' said the farmer; 'for my missus's conscience is against bets.'
'No, certainly not.'
'Nor a trick?' he said, looking from one to another.
'No. It is to be honest work. I am a farmer, and know what work is, and have done it too.'
Farmer Ogden, to a certain extent, gave in, and we departed. His son held the gate open for us, with a keen look at Harold, full of wonder and inquiry.
'You'll stand by me?' said Harold, lingering with him.
'Yes, sir,' said Phil Ogden; 'but I doubt if we can do it. Father says it is a week's work for five men, if you could get them to do it.'
'Never fear,' said Harold. 'We'll save your mother's life yet against her will, and make you all as healthy as if you'd been born in New South Wales.'
This was Friday, and Phil had an engagement on the Monday, so that Tuesday was fixed, much to Eustace's displeasure, for he did not like Harold's condescending to work which labourers would hardly undertake; and besides, he would make his hands, if not himself, absolutely unfit for the entertainment on Thursday. On which Harold asked if there were no such thing as water. Eustace implored him to give it up and send half-a-dozen unemployed men, but to this he answered, 'I should be ashamed.'
And when we went home he rode on into Mycening, to see about his equipment, he said, setting Eustace despairing, lest he, after all, meant to avoid the London tailor, and to patronise Mycening; but the equipment turned out to be a great smock-frock. And something very different came home with him--namely, a little dainty flower-pot and pan, with an Etruscan pattern, the very best things that had been turned out of the pottery, adorned with a design in black and white, representing a charming little Greek nymph watering her flowers.
'Don't you think, Lucy, Miss Tracy being a shareholder, and it being her birthday, the chairman might present this?' he inquired.
I agreed heartily, but Eustace, with a twist of his cat's-whisker moustache, opined that they were scarcely elegant enough for Miss Tracy; and on the Monday, when he did drag Harold up to the tailor's, he brought down a fragile little bouquet of porcelain violets, very Parisian, and in the latest fashion, which he flattered himself was the newest thing extant, and a much more appropriate offering. The violets could be made by a pinch below to squirt out perfume!
'Never mind, Harold,' I said, 'you can give your flower-pot all the same.'
'You may,' said Harold.
'Why should not you?'
