a 
 
 i'';^.' 

 
 v./ 
 
 I b RARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 or ILLINOIS ' As regards the 
 
 , p&phaps tho most 
 
 tribiitions from Mr. 
 
 ^ ^ ;(>04), and " l^^odden 
 
 g/{,3 return to the class of 
 
 h first made his mark 
 
 )n a level with these 
 
 Dud deal more than 
 
 lis pictures of last 
 
 driving their flock of 
 
 through the fertile 
 
 undoubtedly possess 
 
 3ic grace. The other 
 
 is no doubt that to 
 
 — o--on referred at the 
 
 Academy banquet, in his outburst of rhetoric 
 about the landscapes of the year. '• On that 
 canvas," he said, " the uncanny sun sinks down 
 in blood behind the fdn." And so it does, but wo 
 doubt very much whether, as a landscape, the 
 picture deserves to rank higher than a multitude 
 of otherclever experiments made by figure-painters 
 in a realm which is not their own. ^ ^"
 
 ki ^<J^ 
 
 
 J^ 
 
 THE ILLUSTEATEl) LONDON NEAYS 
 
 111 
 
 ii 
 
 A novel very far above the average, both in design and 
 execution, i.-* The Bidhja of Sodden Fen : by the author of 
 "Four Crotchets to a Bar" (Richard Bentley and Son), 
 wherein the author has aimed high and has gone very near the 
 mark. Persons, places, scenes, ideas, choice of subject, 
 st3'le of writing, all are out of the common, all have 
 the charm of originality and freshness. Terrible and 
 even revolting as the catastrophe is, it is quite in accordance 
 with dramatic propriety and Avith what is called poetical 
 justice. The contrast between the characters of James 
 Daily i\\Q fatlier, and Adam Daily, the son, is admirably worked 
 out ; the portrait of Susan Daily is a gem ; the sketches of 
 the children are delightful ; the jDicture of Jessie is cliarming 
 beyond measure ; the purpose of the story is noble and 
 worthily set forth. James Daily is a poor tiler and thatcher, 
 of Slumsby, in the fens of Lincolnshire; he believes himself 
 to l)ave "rights" which date from the seventeenth 
 century, when ..Dutchmen came over to drain our fens; 
 mid he spends his life in sullen work and brooding over the 
 injustice, which, as he holds, prevents him from being the 
 owner of Sodden Fen. His claim is based upon his name 
 and his undoubted descent from a certain Daily who had re- 
 claimed the land from the waters, and who had died a martyr's 
 death at the hands of his mistaken compiitriots and neigh boiirs. 
 The story of this martyrdom is told with much power and 
 pathos. But, even if James Daily were the mart3'r's heir, the 
 very same tradition that admitted theheir.-hip held that, so far 
 as Sodden Fen was concerned, it had been given by the martyr 
 as a connnon possession for ever to the villagers of Slumsby. 
 Meanwhile, the property, or a greafc part of it, is enjoyed 
 neither by the villages nor by Jame-^ Daily, but by a member 
 of the prolific and well-known family of Smith. How Adam 
 Daily, eldest son of James, is educated by the incomparable 
 Jcsoieintoa hero; how he becomes master of the property to 
 Avhich his family have so long considered themselves to have a 
 claim ; and how he disappoints and infuriates his less unselfish 
 father by a Quixotic use" of the ownership, is to be discovered 
 
 by anyone who cares to have the pleasure of reading an un- 
 usually meritorious novel. The storj is not intensely iii- 
 terestnig throughout, but in the main it is something better 
 than merely interesting, and is altogether a very creditable 
 performance.
 
 r 
 
 \pj^^^ 
 
 '• The Dailys of Sodden i''on " (^ voia., 
 Ricbard Bentley and Son), by the author of 
 " Four Crotchets to a Ear," is a remarkable and 
 interesting book. It bears very little resem- 
 blance to the clever but eccentric story by the 
 same author v/hich preceded it, and is a great 
 advance ujjon it. The lines of construction are 
 simple and large, they have been clearly laid 
 down in the author's mind, and they advance 
 towards the developed end v/ith gradual and 
 natural transitions which are so skilfully 
 
 ^c^gcd that the reader is scarcely 
 
 aware until he reaches it how ex- 
 tensive the ground is over which he 
 has been carried. 1 ' II - " -• ■ • i 
 
 I '' - ;• ^^ Tne writer ut- 
 
 I clerstands tne silent passion of the people for 
 the land, theh deep — sometimes unconscious — 
 sense of wrongful alienation from it, and his 
 sympathy has infoi-med his tale with strong 
 and serious interest. In a senso it might be 
 called a political novel — the sense in whic-'>< 
 politics are distinct from party. But there is 
 also the lighter touch v/hich brightens a stcry 
 •^i serious interest into romar^ce. Aurea Chapel 
 the girl of the lovely golden locks, is char- 
 mingly drawn. Her vacillations betv/een her 
 three lovers, her childish egotism y,nd selfish- 
 ness which only become hard and unlovely i» 
 adversity, her comfort m her own beauty, arc 
 ai'iusingiy conceived. Describing her' past 
 troubles to her friend Jessie, Aiu-ea says : '* I 
 had got nothing to support me at all except 
 7jiy hair. And even that was not half the com- | 
 fort that you might have thought." The 
 reader is very glad to leave Aurea sheltered 
 from every danger, even from that of her own 
 shallow nature. 
 
 Jkz. '^Ou^X^ Jn-CvV^^ »
 
 ITHB TIMES, 
 
 BBCBNT NOVELS, 
 
 "The Dailys of Sodden Fen." By the author 
 of " Foar Crochets to a Bar" (Bentley and Son). 
 The merit of this novel consists in its portraiture 
 of rural life and manners. The Dailys are an in-, 
 teresting family, and not the less interesting 
 because Daily, the father, an humble thatcher, has 
 \ * J ^^ ^^^ bonnet' ' concerning some land re- 
 claimed from the fens by an ancestor of the same 
 name, but which has since come into the hands of 
 
 the squire. \W VT' " "^ T ' '^-^^ -i »" 
 
 _• - - •; - vj . 'But as long as he is in Daily s 
 
 cottage the author is always entertaining. He has a 
 turn for rustic epigram which reminds us faintly of 
 George Eliot. There is a capital scene in the work- 
 house (where Grandam Daily resides, and where 
 Daily's father and grandfather before him have 
 ended tneir days),_which must have been studip-rl 
 
 from the life. ' ' '' r «,.-+"««' 4.i,« 
 ._ jj w-- --, ' CO, too, the 
 
 brief descrijt)tions of fen scenery are vivid and na- 
 tural. But when the author diverges into moralizing, 
 01 analyses of character, the language becomes j 
 Bometimes laboured and rugged. To those who 
 appreciate studies of village life this story of the 
 fen-lands may be safely reconimended. 
 
 'The Bailts of Sodden Fen/"' by the 
 Author of '• Four Crotchets to a Bar," three vols. 
 [Bentley and Son), is a story of the Fens, and 
 introduces the reader to a very novel phase of 
 life; and there are certainly few who will not 
 be irresistibly attracted by a romantic pictui-e 
 vhich is for the most part vpvy true to nature. 
 
 ) While the "minor charac^^ers are for 
 
 raost partSQmewhal. shadowy "^d^ nnre al, thf 
 
 book shows signs of real power, and we shall 
 
 I await with interest the next novel by the same 
 
 ! author. . ^,,.,..,.,.,,..,.^ ,. ,)>,, . - .r -:^-----
 
 V-i^ /^' 
 
 CLy^c/icxJi.<x^ 
 
 *' The Dailys of Sodden Fen." By the ^-■'^^^'^ I 
 of "Four Crotchets to a Bar," &c. iliree-'i 
 Vols. R. Bentley and Son.-In 1650, a cer- ' 
 tain Dyocrorie Dailie, who had drained and re- 
 claimed some marshes m the English len country, ^ 
 was murdered before the altar m the paiisli ■ 
 church as he stood tliere to tell the people what 
 he had done for them, and not for lumselt ; lor 
 the lands that he had rescued were to be hancLccl 
 over Lo the village of Slumsby, " as common 
 ground, for all time to come and for ever. Ana 
 a cross was raised over his grave, and on it was 
 en-^raved— ^Hi^:: expir avit pro populo mortuus. 
 ■ Ye do not know that we quite understand the 
 • WiTt^(Sr'*-Fivg^ii-about_i^^ and the rights 
 
 of the commoiir71out~we~nii5'~iaLQ^ the 
 
 - *'Daii3^s of Sodden Fen" is a noveloF rare 
 ' merit. If we say nothing of A urea Chapel and 
 her three lovers, it is because we regard her 
 and them as harmless excrescences on the story 
 — the necessary ballast to trim a three-volume 
 novel. If we say little or nothing of Jessie Apers 
 Smith, who is a woman of rare nobl3ness and 
 charm, it is because we could hardly speak of 
 ' her w^ithout telling more of the story than it is 
 } fair to tell. .^. .
 
 EVENING NEWS. 
 ^^.Z -"^^^ -P^^^r of Sodden Fen 'is well equipped. The characters are original, and 
 there ,s plenty of variety; the author's grasp of his purpose is firm ; the study o men 
 and t\„ngs IS close and trus worthy ; the insight into human nature is deep f and he 
 syn^pathy with human sufienng is true; and, besides all this, there is a freshness 
 cf subject-matter, an mdependence of treat.nent, and a sustained strength of drama' c 
 mteres, which will make a book full of attraction for the cultivated and thoughtfu .Teach 
 and hold even the ordinary reader. Looked at from xvhatever point of view, 'The Dailys 
 
 fL just fy th^veriicT ''^^ ^' ' '"'"''' '"^^ ''^ ^''' "° ^'''' '^''' '^'' ''''^''^' ^'^^1 ^^^ 
 
 By the Author of " Four 
 
 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. ^, ............ x .u. h 
 
 Crotchets to a Bar," &c. Three vols. J 
 
 "If George Eliut be dead, the happy example she set of Irgh-class literature. '2 
 sterling good writing, and first-rate work, is not lost, but finds a fit exponent in ^ 
 the author of ' The Uaiiys of Sodden Fen.' . . . The scene is laid in the fen country, 
 and the characters which mainly i)eople the story are those of tilers and ihatchers 
 and their equals, luit depicted with such artistic skill as is rarely met with in fiction 
 ; — I'r hitcJiall Rtview. 
 
 The , Dailys of Sodden Fen. 
 
 "The Dailys of Sodden Fen." By the author of "Four Crotchets to a 
 Bar." Three vols. (Richard Bentley and Son.) This novel is made up of two 
 parts, which have little more than an accidental connection between them. 
 There is the story of "Sodden Fen," part of the region drained by Cornelius 
 \^erniuyden and his associates, and there is the love-story of George Akers, 
 vicar of this Lincolnshire parish. The first story is not, we suppose, without 
 some socio-political meaning. " Sodden Fen " becomes the property of 
 the labourers of the parish, and is to be thenceforward a paradise of " small 
 culture." It is not within our province to give an opinion on the economical 
 merits of this arrangement, though we may say in passing that tlie labourer can 
 hardly be worse off than he is now, even if he is weighted by what some econo* 
 mists so earnestly deprecate on his behalf — the possession of t vo or three acres. 
 But we may say that there is some improbability, not to say absurdity, in the 
 development of events which are made to lead up to this result, and yet that the 
 story as a whole cannot fail to impress the reader. The Dailys, father and 
 son, the one brooding over the sense of right denied him, till his soul is 
 filled with niadness, the other with his simple, clear-eyed, unfaltering sense of 
 duty, aVe fine studies. And tlie whole j)iclure of the Daily household isa striking 
 one. The v.-riter has studied this peasant life and knou'S it, and makgp it so real 
 in description tliat the effect is not spoiled by the setting of dnbious 
 ,-^romance in which slie has clioscn to present it. Tiie minor i^Iot of 
 
 the novel, the loves of the Rev. George Akers, shows merits of quite another 
 kind. Theie is no common skill shown in the drawing of Anna Chapel ; the 
 limitations of a nature which is capable of rising to a certain height and incapa- 
 ble of rising further present no easy subject, and the writer has handled it well. 
 We feel that this Anna, so unworthy as she is of George Akers's honest love, is 
 a poor creature, and yet acknowledge ^h at she has a certain strength of hei;_ 
 own, and can fH what, p'^'^r • A •- -^ smaii pare in the world with no little 
 3 as well (as 
 
 satisfaction to others 
 
 to herself. " The Dailys of Sodden Fen " 
 
 has certain mannerisms and ' a general " viewiness " which may become 
 perilous, but it is a clever iand^promising piece of work 
 
 ?^P*i^ 
 
 ^W^A t'««^*Sftp<ags^.«v y«w/vr, Vy^fr-z^
 
 S^'^^cuy^^s SOME NEW NOVELS.* 
 Crajr^^^ ' "The Dailys of Soddex Fen." 
 This is a really fine novel in design ; and the execution is of a high 
 order, with a just and impressive catastrophe. The reader would probably 
 be glad to dispense with the services of Aurea Chapel, without whom, 
 however, the cubic measure of the three volumes vv-ould be very noticeably 
 diminished ; but scarcely any other character could be spared, so new and 
 refreshing are nearly all the fictitious beings vrhom the novelist his sum- 
 moned from, the recesses of imagination. New, too, is the scenery, new the 
 subject, new the scope, and new the style of treatment. The fortunes of a 
 pair of lovers do not — for once — claim attention to the exclusion of m^st 
 other matters. Lovers, in the present case, may be said, in American 
 parlance, to take a back seat. And yet, if ever there were a heroine 
 for vhom worthy men should have been willing to fight twelve hoars 
 by Shrewsbury clock, such a heroine is the enthusiastic Jessie. The 
 reason, of course, why she does not have as many suitors as Penelope 
 is that she is known from the beginning of the novel to hive a husband 
 some\\here; unless, indeed, he may have perished ** unbeknown," in a 
 miserable fashion worthy of his miserable career. True, that was also, 
 to a certain extent, the condition of the persistently wooed Penelope 
 herself; but England of to-day is not Ithaca of Odyssean times, and 
 English suitors now are not as Ithacan suitors were then. And so Jessie 
 is left in comparative peace, to lighten the parish with the charm of her 
 presence ; to comfort the soul of the old man who is her father-in- 
 law, though neither of them knows it ; to lecture her amiable brother into 
 activity ; and, m.ost wonderful of all things, to bring out the dormant 
 gocd in Adam Daily until he is developed into a conspicuous eximple 
 of Nature's noblemen. Terrible as his end is, it was artistically correct 
 to let hirn die at the moment of his triumph ; ?nd; horrible as it is that he 
 should lose his life by the hand of him to whom he owed it, there is 
 undoubtedly a dramatic fitness in the awful consummation. The family of 
 the Dailys, one and all, are conceived with great originality and sketched 
 with rem.arkable vigour and skill; and that is a very happy and characteristic 
 touch whereby each of the twelve children is represented to have hid the 
 name of a month, from January to December in order, for second 
 Christian name. Altogether the novel is of an undoubtedly superior j| 
 stamp. 
 
 MORNING POST. 
 "A powerfully written tale ; while possessing the interest of a romance, enters into 
 the discussion of many social problems." 
 
 ACADEMY 
 
 " The love passages between the thoroughly real, amiable, and worldly Aurea Chapel 
 and her third and Vmal ' fate ' form a piece of snnny comedy incomparably supenot to 
 what passes muster as tlie humorous by-play of ordinary fiction."
 
 ^-^--l^-H''^ 
 
 THE 
 
 Dailys of Sodden Fen. 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF 
 FOUR CROTCHETS TO A BAR,' Etc. 
 
 ' And in the meadows, which before were deep Lakes and drowned 
 Fenns, by excluding the River, he found them fruitful fields, and as 
 good ground as could be wished : Nay, of the very Pitts and Bogs, 
 he thereby made a Garden of Pleasure.' 
 
 DUGDALE. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. L 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON, 
 
 ^wblishcrs in (Drbiniu'jj Jo ^n* ^Hi^j^sJiJ the Quern. 
 1884. 
 
 [^// Eights Reserved. \
 
 7k^ 
 
 "^To ' TLo Laiiys of ^.j^A-yi iLii.' more 
 than to most of tlie good novels vrliicli have 
 recently seen the light, a somewhat trivial 
 and colourless expression may be fitly 
 applied. In virtue of its subject, of its 
 boldly drawn characters, of its descriptions 
 and manner oi treatment, it is pre-eminently 
 readable. For central subject we have a 
 reclaimed feu, with a descendant of the 
 original reclaimer who is possessed by a 
 monomaniacal idea that the land ought to 
 be his own, and another descendant in whom 
 the moral giandeur of his ancestor comes 
 out after the lapse of two hundred years. 
 The story throws light upon a district 
 which has not been worked, or at any 
 rate not ova' worked, by previous writers 
 of fiction ; and the picture here presented, 
 though it is stippled in with laborious 
 care rather than painted with the free hand 
 of a master, is a thoroughly pleasant piece 
 of work. As for the characters, the whole 
 family of the Dailys are English to the 
 backbone — vertebrate fen-folk, whose good 
 yeoman's blood reasserts itself with gathered 
 power after a sleep of several generations. 
 The subsidiary characters are less successful, 
 though not without merit in their various 
 degrees. Some of them are racy, all more 
 or less natiu-al ; but the strength of the book 
 is in the family above named. Few more 
 weird figiu-es will be found in contemporary 
 fiction than that of James Dail}', as he sat 
 night after night crouched on the thatch of 
 his cottage, brooding over the dim prospect 
 of Sodden Fen, which he has sworn never 
 to enfer except as the recognized owner. 
 The keeping of his vow. the manner of his 
 release, the long nui^sing of his insane greed 
 
 and envy and fancied wrongs, are told with 
 masculine power — which is by no means the- 
 same thing as saying by a male writer. If 
 this novel is not one of the most vigorous 
 which have appeared within the last year 
 or two, it has elements of vigour in concep- 
 tion and execution which entitle it to mmcb 
 consideration. There are inecjualities whicb 
 would have been avoided by an author of 
 higher literary capacity ; but the discerning^ 
 reader will not fail to observe many indica- 
 tions of the best qualities that a novelist caa 
 '.possess. / " -— - -
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 
 
 CHAPTER PACK 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 1 
 
 I. IN THE HEART OF A THATCHER - - 43 
 
 II. A FIRST IDEA- 63 
 
 III. THE VICAR'S SISTER - - - - 94 
 
 IV. SUSAN DAILY'S VIEWS - - - - 129 
 V, LOVERS AND FRIENDS - - - - 165 
 
 VL A FEW FACTS- ----- 199 
 
 VII. 'ATHWART THE GLOOMING FLATS' - - 246 
 
 VIIL AN UNEXPECTED INVITATION - - - 276
 
 C^L^^^IA^
 
 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 ROM the Dutch engineer, Cor- 
 nelius Yermuyden, who, in the 
 middle of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, undertook to drain the English fen- 
 lands, to Adam January Daily, the thatcher's 
 son, who, some two centuries later, first 
 trod the peat-bogs by the margin of 
 ' Diggorj-'s Dyke,' the descent might seem 
 greater than that indicated by the mere 
 lap^e of years. 
 
 VOL. I. 1
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 Adam January Daily, at the latter period, 
 dwelt with his father, mother, and eleven 
 brothers and sisters, in an obscure cottage, 
 valued at a yearly rental of four pounds 
 sterling, in the remote village of Slumsby 
 in the Lincolnshire levels. Sir Cornelius 
 Yermuyden, more than two centuries earlier, 
 had obtained the royal sanction for the 
 draining of these levels. Any connection 
 between points so remote might appear at 
 the outset as distinctly the work of imagina- 
 tion as would a psychological memoir of Sir 
 Cornelius himself if written by a biographer 
 of the nineteenth century. None the less it 
 is certain that could some retrospective 
 process be performed, similar to that pro- 
 blematic undertaking by which a spider's 
 web would be imravelled backwards, Cor- 
 nelius Yermuyden would be found to be the 
 spot located somewhere at the heart of the
 
 INTRODUCTOR V. 
 
 web whence were woven the fortunes of Adam 
 January Daily. Whilst observant of the 
 issues and cognisant, perhaps, of the origin 
 of any given agency in the history of an 
 individual or a nation, it is often impossible 
 to trace its successive developments, draw- 
 ing out each thread to its fullest length, 
 gossamer by unbroken gossamer ; in default 
 therefore of such an interminable under- 
 taking, let us. transport ourselves at once 
 to Yermuy den's side at the centre of the 
 events in question. 
 
 There were days in which it must be 
 confessed that Holland, and not Britannia, 
 appeared to ' rule the waves.' Yermuy den 
 left a country of sedate and solid drainers, 
 who had long ago reckoned with and paid 
 off their earlier tyrant, King Flood. He 
 came to a dreary waste of fen, where, ^in 
 bogs of huge and hideous bignesse,' that 
 
 1—2
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 monarch's rule was slavishly accepted by an 
 amphibious race. A race, too, of that sad- 
 dest sort of Conservative, the churl whose 
 experience of change has taught him that it 
 can but be for the worse. 
 
 In the Great Level, so frequently inun- 
 dated, Yermuyden found a rough and savage 
 set of people, living on their wild-fowl and 
 their fish, catching the latter not unfre- 
 quently on the floors of their hovels, when 
 the waters subsided after an inundation ; 
 knocking over the former, upon the roofs 
 of their cabins, with the poles which they 
 used for wading in the marshes, when re- 
 pletion, and not hunger, had rendered the 
 feathered creatures tame. Clad in a half- 
 tanned jerkin sodden to the sickly hue of a 
 toad's under-surface, covered with a spongy 
 sheepskin rotten from contact with the 
 reekinof- osiers whereon it made their bed at
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 5 
 
 nights, Yermuyden and his associates found 
 the Fen-men cutting sedge, driving wild 
 geese, digging ' hassocks ' for fuel, all in an 
 aimless and desultory way, much hindered 
 therein by the inevitable fen-agues, marsh- 
 fevers, asthmas, rheumatisms, and hunger- 
 pangs. 
 
 The foreign undertakers offered these 
 starvelings employment — nay, they im- 
 pressed them into the service of their new 
 drainage- works, at a rate of wages calcu- 
 lated, so it was contemptuously said, by a 
 Dutch measure, and not paid then ; service 
 being enforced by alien overseers carrying 
 arms. But if the abject commoners were 
 slaves, they were willing bondmen only to 
 the ills they knew. Their short-sighted 
 eyes, blinded by the mists and sea-fogs, saw 
 no promise of ultimate gain in present loss. 
 They refused to dry up their fens.
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 AVliat! in order to produce pastures for 
 the Dutchman and the French Protestants 
 who crowded in his train, must they dig 
 and drain and drip with the fetid moisture 
 of fen water, mingling with the ready sweat 
 of ill-fed labour ! What ! destroy their own 
 hsh, scare away their own fowl, parch the 
 suckers of their willows, shrink the acreage 
 of their peat-fuel, stave in the flat bottoms 
 of their fishing skerries, and render their 
 women homeless ! All for what ? When 
 all was dried and done, was it the Fen-man 
 who would profit by the altered propor- 
 tions of land and water ? Was it the Fen- 
 man who would fatten cattle on the fresh 
 green meadows ? Was it he who would 
 trot to market on sleek roadsters along the 
 newly erected causeways ? Not he. It 
 would be the Dutchmen and the English 
 courtiers who would gain the rescued lands,
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 of Tvhich they had ah-eady secured large 
 grants in advance. No ; let the Fen-man 
 yield up his reed-thatched and wattle- 
 covered hovel to make room for the cattle-' 
 stalls and the farming homesteads of the 
 immigrants, and then let him crawl in his 
 sheepskin farther east to the ' Wash,' and 
 there drown! Not yet, however, for the 
 Fen-man knew a device capable of outwit- 
 ting all the purchased genius, all the 
 borrowed science, and all the usurers' 
 wealth that ever crossed the ocean. 
 
 In olden days the offence of dyke-break- 
 ing held in these districts a place in the 
 annals of popular crime, analogous to that 
 blacker one now occupied by the malicious 
 production of railway accidents. The mean 
 and cowardly wretch who now, at the mini- 
 mum ri.>rk and trouble to himself, places a 
 sleeper across a line, then took a pick-axe
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 and, under cover of a marsh fog or of a 
 moonless night, wrought a weak place in 
 the side of a dyke, covered it lightly with 
 loosened earth, and left it to burst at the 
 next rising of the waters. Thousands of 
 acres were thus frequently reduced to their 
 pristine condition, and the labour and ex- 
 pense of years were squandered in an 
 hour. 
 
 A venerable Act of Parliament enacts 
 that ' Whereas divers evil-disposed personnes 
 of their perverse and evill dispositions mali- 
 ciously at divers and sundry times, have cut, 
 cast down, and broken up, divers parts of 
 the Dykes ; and also by reason of the same 
 waters much people have been drowned in 
 their beds, within their houses, and have 
 lost the most part of their goods, for re- 
 formation of the same it is ordayned, en- 
 acted, and established that the said offenders
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 be proceeded against with like judgement 
 and execution that the Justices have used 
 and accustomed to do, upon other Felonies, 
 being Felony at the common law.' And 
 there seems little reason to doubt that by a 
 statute more ancient still, but stated by 
 some to have been actually enforced, the 
 guilty wretch so caught was condemned, 
 after being suitably excommunicated, to 
 be neatly embedded alive in the fissure 
 which he had created. A literal method 
 this of making a man stop up his own gap. 
 History is, it must be confessed, discreetly 
 reticent on the subject of this remarkable 
 document. Its provisions are alleged to 
 have been conceived in the brain of a 
 certain abbot, renowned for sanctity of 
 person and for inspiration of judgment. 
 In his monastery on the Xene, or the 
 Welland, the only copy extant might be
 
 10 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 seen until it was destroyed at the sacking 
 of the religious houses during the Reforma- 
 tion ; the original document having already- 
 perished in the Great Fire of London, 
 together with many other valuable and 
 instructive parchments relating to the litera- 
 ture of the Fens. 
 
 Tradition in the sixteenth and seven- 
 teenth centuries had, however, no doubt as 
 to the validity of this notable charter. In 
 proof of such conviction, the fact was 
 brought forward that several dykes popu- 
 larly credited with such repair, held good 
 during sundry remarkable floods, when all 
 other water- walls were falling around them. 
 Indisputable evidence this, since all the Fen 
 world knew that ' a dyke that was mended 
 with a man never broke ' ! ^ 
 To return to Yermuyden. 
 Everywhere the commoners of the Fen 
 
 CL ^ tjie /A/>f V^vT /v/^o^^^ A.i/€ ci 
 U-o-c^^ (^h^-oe^ L^iT^^ .
 
 INTRODUCTORY. \i 
 
 harassed the new-comers, destroyed their 
 windmills, killed their cattle, burnt their 
 newly-sown crops, cut across their embank- 
 ments, undermined their dams, tore down 
 their banks, opened their sluices at high- 
 water, shut them at low, and brought the 
 water upon them as fast as they drained it 
 off or built it out. 
 
 Now, as they stood upon the defensive, 
 wdth rusty old matchlocks that would not go 
 off, muttering curses between their teeth, 
 the Fen-men bethought them of their own 
 peculiar recipe. Not without the sense of 
 a grim joke, tempered by superstitious after- 
 thought that a good old English custom 
 must be honoured in the pious observance, 
 did the Fen-man stuff a stout burgher or 
 two into the walls of the newly-erected 
 dykes. Then he bit his thumbs, declared 
 the spot to be haunted by unclean ghosts,
 
 12 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 and waited to see what would happen 
 next. 
 
 Their ally, the fever-fiend, fought on 
 the side of the Fen -men — lucky accident 
 was always ready to be impressed into then* 
 service. The emissary of progress was 
 caught in a sluice, choked in a drain, felled 
 by a quag-pole, or burnt in his holding : 
 rarely was he killed in actual conflict. 
 Open war was resorted to by the rebellious 
 commoner only at the last extremity. His 
 neighbours were too scattered, and his own 
 resources too precarious. 
 
 Many an enterprising citizen, who had 
 gone over from the Hague in hopes of 
 profit, perished ignominiously in these 
 English levels ; and ominously across the 
 waters words such as these were carried : 
 * A dyke that is botched with a Boor is aye 
 sure !'
 
 I.VTRODUCTORY, 13 
 
 Contemptuous sepulture of a dishonoured 
 foe was all that the Fen-man could pro- 
 bably be charged with ; but it was whispered 
 in the Hao'ue that these men had been 
 buried ere the breath was out of their 
 bodies, and in many a snug box-bed in 
 Zealand, Dutch children hid their scared 
 round eyes and shuddered at the too 
 graphic story, told upon the hearthstone, 
 of the agonies of the embedded drainer ; of 
 that decent citizen built up alive in that 
 savage country beyond the seas, never to 
 come home to dear comfortable Holland 
 any more. 
 
 Had not an old chronicler of their own 
 stated that the English Fenlands were 
 * mostly full of devils — as witness the 
 sufferings of the blessed St. Guthlac ' ? 
 Devils incarnate, so the Dutchmen found 
 them. Even so less dangerous possibly
 
 14 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 than the fever-fiend, to whom the modern 
 critic attributes the experiences of that holy 
 man when, in remote days, having taken up 
 his unwise abode in Crowland, he found it 
 to be ' a place of horror and great solitude, 
 where black troops of unclean spirits filled 
 'the air with dark clouds, and with mighty 
 shrieks were heard to roar, till, by-and-by, 
 rushing into the house, they first bound the 
 holy saint, then drew him out of his cell 
 and cast him over head and ears into the 
 dirty Fen.' St. Guthlac lived to tell the 
 tale; there were Dutchmen less holy and 
 less fortunate. 
 
 Cornelius Yermuyden was, however, a 
 man not to be easily beaten. With him, in 
 his thankless task in the southern portion 
 of the Great Level, this Dutch Sisyphus 
 associated thirteen enterprising gentlemen — 
 mostly Dutch, but partly English; holding
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 15 
 
 the Englishmen chiefly, it must be con- 
 fessed, by the lapels of their embroidered 
 waistcoats, the natives of Holland by their 
 leather pouches. These men wrote their 
 names in water ; yet, in so doing, they 
 rescued them strangely from oblivion. 
 They liberally bestowed their own cog- 
 nomens upon the waters of the ' Eau,' cr of 
 the ^ Dyke,' or of the ' Leam,' the construc- 
 tion of which had secured them in posses- 
 sion of the adjacent lands thus redeemed 
 from submersion, and, contrary to popular 
 dictum, the streams to which they confided 
 them have safely transmitted their titles to 
 posterity. 
 
 One man, and one only, seems to have 
 whispered his name to those level floods in 
 vain. The osier-beds and the bulrushes by 
 the margins of the meres heard the syllables 
 only to forget them ; the sycophant Fame
 
 i6 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 played him false, too busy, so the story ran, 
 in trumpeting the names of his decorated 
 associates. But in the village of Slumsby, 
 tradition, that voice of the uncultivated 
 many, asserts that vulgar ears heard, rude 
 lips repeated, and uneducated memories 
 retained, the sound of the name by which 
 the last and the least of the fen-draining 
 heros was known. 
 
 Amongst the old folk at ' Dripping 
 Ferry,' in the infirmary of Cutthorpe Union, 
 and amongst the Slumsby cottages, the tale 
 was told for generations that Diggory's 
 Dyke, on the borders of ' Sodden Fen,' 
 indicated the western limits of the portion 
 originally belonging to one ' Dyg^^rie 
 Dailie ' — so the name was first spelt — as his 
 share in the allotment of lands made at the 
 expiration of Yermuy den's later contract. 
 
 Sir Philip and Sir Robert and the Earl,
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 the Doctor and the Justice and the Esquire 
 yet lived in history — so the people held — 
 whilst poor ' D jggorie Dailie' had died, 
 simply because he had been a man of their 
 class. A yeoman, inheriting his reeking 
 homestead in the very midst of the reedy 
 Fens, finding the necessary outlay for his 
 arduous task only with narrow economy, 
 which reduced his mode of life to the con- 
 dition of that of the commoners around 
 him, Dailie had taken up the draining pro- 
 ject solely as the champion of his poorer 
 neighbours ; espousing their cause less 
 against the encroachments of the waters to 
 which they were accustomed, than of other 
 invaders less welcome to the soil. He was 
 a man, rude and unconciliatory of speech 
 to the great, capable only of good work for 
 the land. 
 
 In the great floods of the year 1814 there 
 VOL. I. 2 
 
 /
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 were old people in Slumsby who loved to 
 point out that whilst other districts were 
 two feet or more below the surface, the rich 
 peat acres bordered by ' Diggory's Dyke ' 
 and ' Sodden Learn ' turned their black 
 faces un submerged up to the weeping 
 heavens. Xot ' Dailie's Eau/ mind, or any 
 other such foreign appellation ; but plain 
 ' Diggory's Dyke,' as though spoken 
 lovingly of some member of one's own family, 
 of one's own brother, whose surname no- 
 body could want to be told. 
 
 Diggory's Dyke withstood the onslaught 
 of the waters for reasons more than one. 
 There was a dark tale told about that fatal 
 trench, which long distinguished it in the 
 eyes of the country-folk from all other 
 dykes, drains, lodes, or eaus for sixty miles 
 around. As gathered from an ancient 
 chronicle, it runs thus :
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 19 
 
 * Upon the feast-day of St. Elene, in the 
 month of May, in the year a.d. 1650, 
 did honest Dyggorie Dailie, Dike Eeeve of 
 the Hundred of South Holland in Lincoln- 
 shire ' (now a Dike-Reeve is and was a man, 
 and not a bird — one appointed for the over- 
 looking of dykes and ditches), 'complete a 
 strong sluice of wood which he had caused 
 to be made upon the river, in the parts 
 whereabouts lay his own holding, which he 
 had inherited from his forefathers. This 
 sluice he builded of a sufficient height and 
 breadth for the defence of the tides coming 
 from the sea, and likewise against the fi^esh 
 waters descending ; excluding the river 
 with a mighty bank, because every year 
 almost all these meadows lying near unto 
 that stream were overflowed with the con- 
 tinued inundations thereof. For which 
 reason this place called '' Sodden " had first 
 
 2—2
 
 2'o INTRODUCTORY, 
 
 that name ; id esi^ " a rotten fen." And 
 erecting upon that bank divers tenements 
 and a water-mill, did Dyggorie Dailie in a 
 short time make it a common ground, 
 whereimto he designed of his own bounty 
 gardens and arable fields ; and thus by 
 banking the said river reduced those low 
 grounds, which were before that time deep 
 lakes and impassable fens, into most fruitful 
 fields and pastures, and the most humid 
 and moorish parts thereof to a garden of 
 pleasure ; and performed the same upon his 
 fi^ee good will and charity for the ease of 
 his country. 
 
 * Thence going through the market-place 
 of Cutthorpe, he repaired to the parish 
 church of St. Stephen in that same town to 
 render thanks for the Divine aid in this his 
 late painful undertaking. For a principal 
 assembly was at that period held yearly
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 within the month of May, at which every 
 man within the bounds of the said parishes 
 must contribute his portion for the lawful 
 quantity of his holding of common, or pas- 
 ture, and fishing. Such payment having 
 been ordained to be made by order of the 
 sheriffs of this present time in the church 
 of St. Stephen on the feast of St. Elene, a 
 large number of the people were there pre- 
 sent most grudgingly to pay their hardly- 
 earned taxes, as also the lords of the town- 
 ships, the landowners, the deputy- sheriff, 
 the clergy, bailiffs, and so forth. Which 
 business being hardly put through by 
 reason of the poverty and the disaffection of 
 the people, in view of the late troubles did 
 Dailie hear the common bailiff from the steps 
 of the altar publish this order of decree of 
 the Lords in Parliament, that " For the pre- 
 venting of mischief, and for the preservation
 
 22 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 of the peace of the county, the Shireves of 
 Lincolne should punctually pursue the 
 statutes made in the thirteenth year of King 
 Henry lY., for the suppressing of riots and 
 routs ; and should call to their assistance, 
 if need required, the trained bands and the 
 Parliament forces to the aiding and assist- 
 ing in guarding the sluices and sewers, and 
 in repairing what had of late been of wilful 
 malice destroyed." 
 
 ' Which order being so published, the 
 angry congregation did as one man arise 
 and force the said bailiff out from thence, 
 as also the deputy- sheriff, the itinerant 
 justices of the peace, the clergy, and other 
 participants there present, telling them that 
 they should not come there again except 
 they were stronger than they. They like- 
 wise ejected all such as were foreigners, 
 bidding them swim away like ducks back to 
 their own land.
 
 INTRODUCTORY, 
 
 ' But while they thus comported them- 
 selves, Daihe rose up from his seat in their 
 midst, and ascending the steps of the altar, 
 by fair representation and prudent words 
 sought to calm his neighbours, telling them 
 of the work which he had even now com- 
 pleted of his own good accord in the village 
 of Slumsby, hard by, for the draining of 
 Sodden Fen. " Forasmuch, also, as they 
 ought for the public benefit to take care 
 and provide against the perils, dangers, and 
 intolerable losses there hapning by the 
 river's inundations, and to prevent the like 
 for the time to come, he counselled that, 
 together with himself and his heirs, they 
 would, for the future, repair their own 
 banks and watergangs according to the 
 quantity of their land, as it should be the 
 custom of the country, without any inter- 
 vention of foreign undertakers, or any 
 contest or contradiction for ever."
 
 24 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 * Furthermore, he urged that " the in- 
 habitants of those parts, imitating the good 
 husbandry of those in other countryes who 
 had by banking and drayning made good 
 improvements in such fenny places, should 
 begin to do the like there ; bidding them to 
 appoint certain of their own number as 
 constituted commissioners to view and re- 
 2)air those banks and ditches as had been 
 made to that purpose, and were then grown 
 to some decay." 
 
 ' But even while this honest man so 
 delivered himself of these wholesome words, 
 standing with his face to the congregation, 
 upon the steps of the altar, whence but 
 now the angry folk had thrust the said 
 bailiff or beadle, a strong company of those 
 that heard him rushed from the church, and 
 joining themselves with above two hundred 
 other disaffected commoners coming out of
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 the spacious fens, in the reeds and thickets 
 whereof they hid themselves, did pull down 
 another sluice near that town, which occa- 
 sioned the river to break down the banks 
 and overflow the greater part of the whole 
 level ; so that barns and stacks of hay were 
 drowned a yard deep at the least. And 
 thinking this not to be mischief enough, 
 they did tumultuously throw down a great 
 part of the banks and filled up the ditches, 
 putting in cattle into the springing corn of 
 those that had been adventurers for the 
 draining. They also demolished very many 
 holdings, burnt others, cut and burned the 
 ploughs, beat and wounded those that were 
 ploughing. 
 
 ' Now as Dyggorie Dailie stood still and 
 spake, with his face towards the open porch 
 of the church, there came one turbulent and 
 disaffected fellow mounted on the deputy-
 
 26 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 sheriff's own mare, which he had taken 
 from under that worthy gentleman as he 
 fled the sacred building, having robbed him 
 and beaten him to the earth where he even 
 now lay groaning. This fellow, causing the 
 unwilling mare wantonly to trample on the 
 green mounds of the dead, drew bridle for a 
 moment between the yew-tree which even 
 now standeth in Cutthorpe churchyard and 
 the elms which budded then as now. For a 
 second's space these two, the honest yeoman 
 and the mutinous Fen-man, each fronted the 
 other silently ; and the pause of sound was 
 filled with the cawing of the rooks above 
 their heads in the spring sunshine, and the 
 screaming of the jackdaws in the stone 
 tower. Then, pulling heavily at the mare's 
 mouth, the rider urged her all reluctantly 
 through the open doorway, up the aisles of 
 the church, where the muddy floor, inlaid
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 27 
 
 with scanty gravestones, made the animal's 
 hoofs ring now sharply as upon the dried 
 bones of the dead, now with dull thuds as 
 upon down-trodden flesh and blood. 
 
 ' Then at the eastern extremity of the 
 church the rider paused, levelling the loaded 
 musket in his hand full in the face of 
 Dyggorie Dailie ; for by reason of the 
 height of the stone steps of the chancel 
 these two men fronted each other eye to 
 eye. 
 
 ' There, maligning him for a traitor to his 
 country and his neighbours, and casting in 
 his teeth his service with the undertaker for 
 the draining of his land in Slumsby village, 
 this ringleader of the malcontents (himself 
 a turbulent and disaffected spirit, having 
 been bred a Quaker), bade him, under threat 
 of instant death, to mount behind him on 
 the sheriff's mare, and with his own hands
 
 23 I NT ROD UCTOR Y, 
 
 to undo, pull down and destroy the sluice 
 which he had raised on the westernmost 
 border of Sodden Fen ; by which means 
 that land had been by him, Dailie, recovered 
 from the waters, to his own personal profit 
 and to the asserted loss of the speaker, as 
 well as of other dwellers in the Fens, in 
 fishing and fowling. 
 
 * Then, as when upon disturbance of some 
 passing stranger, skein above skein the fen- 
 fowl rise whirling through the air, scream- 
 ing, piping, clacking, croaking, so voice 
 above voice the clangour rang. The men 
 of Cutthorpe joining those of Slumsby in 
 maligning their common benefactor, stirring 
 the peaceful echoes in the arching roofs with 
 their harsh utterances, until the very jack- 
 daws, opening their coarse beaks, joined in 
 the vulgar chorus. A being who could so 
 far forget himself as to procure his fellows'
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 29 
 
 good ere they had claimed it as such, must 
 be an object of ludicrous contempt ; a mere 
 boggart set up for the derision of all pos- 
 sessed of common-sense, whether amongst 
 birds or bipeds, for nothing so inflates the 
 vanity of a vulgar nature, or so stirs its 
 derisive contempt for another, as a service 
 rendered before it is sought. 
 
 * Silently Dyggorie Dailie stood, until from 
 words they had passed to blows ; then from 
 his leather wallet he brought forth a purse, 
 and in the instant hush of expectation fol- 
 lowing the significant action, he displayed it 
 empty. Then flinging it on the time-worn 
 pavement at his feet — 
 
 ' " There,'' quoth he, "men and neighbours, 
 lies all the gain that ever has accrued or shall 
 accrue to me or mine from the draining of 
 Sodden Fen. Now, purse for purse," cried 
 he. " In mine you shall find neither token
 
 30 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 nor placket. Not one doit have I touched 
 from the hands of the Dutch. I demand 
 now that that miscreant fling down also the 
 purse which is weighting the mare's saddle 
 with the taxes of which he hath lightened the 
 deputy -sheriff. For this fellow's benefit 
 will you be distrained of your goods and of 
 your cattle, having duly paid your pro- 
 portions with the wanes for the profit of 
 the bailiffs ? Think you, will the sheriff 
 of the county suffer the exchequer to be 
 robbed of its dues in these payments ? Will 
 you be held innocent of this man's treachery 
 if the deputy-sheriff lies robbed and mur- 
 dered ?" 
 
 *Upon this there arose a fearful tumult 
 in the holy place, some rushing to seize the 
 rider's ill-gotten gains, which were scattered 
 in all directions despite his appealing unto 
 the people ; others yelling, " Down with
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 3'i 
 
 Dailie ! To death with the dishonest yeo- 
 man who has taken the pay of the Dutch 
 devils!'^ 
 
 * Then once more above the uproar might 
 be heard the clear voice of Dyggorie Dailie ; 
 for he was a man who could ever send his com- 
 mands farther across a reed-bed in a howling 
 storm, whilst the duskv alders creaked around 
 him, than another man in a windless noon. 
 A clear conscience, moreover, makes the 
 utterance calm. 
 
 * " Neighbours !" he said, " I take you to 
 witness on the steps of this altar, that 
 Sodden Fen, which I have redeemed from 
 the western limit to the eastern learn, has 
 been to my utter ruin and undoing so re- 
 deemed. Mine, and all that I have, I sold 
 to the lord of this fee that I might find the 
 wherewithal to rescue these lands for the use 
 of the village of Slumsby as common ground.
 
 32 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 whereon they might dig fuel and drive 
 their feathered flocks, for all time to come 
 and for ever! For my own shelter only 
 have I reserved the water-mill which I have 
 builded, at a cost of twenty pounds coin of 
 this realm, on the south-eastern corner of the 
 said fen, hard by the sluice which I have 
 but now completed. There I would live 
 with my wife and my son, by the aid of the 
 winds of the Lord to work the mill for the 
 common weal, earning our victuals as the 
 poor around us use to do." 
 
 'Again a silence fell upon the people; 
 and there were some standing there who 
 noted that whilst Dailie spoke he seemed to 
 raise his head as high as the face of the 
 ano*el on the chancel screen, whilst he cast 
 his eyes so low when he spoke of his son, that 
 they seemed to rest with love on the children 
 of some of the poorest Fen-men there present,
 
 INTRODUCTORY. ^^ 
 
 whose heads scarce reached to the height of 
 the mare's tail. 
 
 * Then, on a sudden, the northern door of 
 the church was burst violently open, and 
 there rushed into their midst men covered 
 with mud-stains and blood, who with 
 curses told that Dyggorie's mill was burnt 
 down, that his sluice was battered in pieces, 
 that his son was mauled whilst he was 
 ploughing, that the deputy - sheriff was 
 dead, and the bailiff ducked for his wanes. 
 
 * The mounted Fen-man then waxing 
 bolder, bade Dyggorie Dailie once more 
 mount behind him and ride to his own vil- 
 lage, where mth his own hands he should 
 breach the Western Ditch, now alone re- 
 maining : and with one voice the fickle folk 
 joined in the same with oaths and cursing. 
 
 ' Dyggorie Dailie had played the traitor ! 
 Dyggorie Dailie had signed the contract 
 VOL. I. 3
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 with the Dutch devils ! Dyggorie Dailie 
 had dried the land to his own profit and 
 theii^ loss in fishing and fowling ! What 
 would become of the reed-cutters ? what of 
 the tanners and the boatmen, if such mis- 
 creants as this were to be tolerated ? The 
 chief justice and the doctor and the earl 
 had already reaped their share in the 
 profits ; was Dailie the latest contractor for 
 nought ? was not each man to receive his 
 share in the land who had set his name to 
 the deed ? Then one man, a stilt-maker 
 by trade, coming behind, with his quag- 
 pole struck him a deadly blow on the back 
 of his head, and he fell with his face toward 
 the altar. 
 
 '' Even as he lay there, it was remembered 
 by some of the frightened children that 
 stood by that he raised his two hands 
 towards the eastern window; yet neither
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 35 
 
 before he was struck, nor after he fell, did he 
 raise a finger in self-defence, although with 
 his country's enemies no man ever fought 
 braver than he. 
 
 ' So, lying prostrate on the feast of St. 
 Elene, there, before the altar in the church 
 of St. Stephen, was this honest man and 
 firm patriot struck and mauled, there beaten 
 and bruised and trampled to death.' 
 
 Thus perished a friend of the people, by 
 them slain as a martyr, because goodness 
 and beauty and worth cannot be known as 
 such by those who are neither good, nor of 
 lovely character, nor of much worth them- 
 selves, until they have first learnt that all 
 these things are in their essence estimable 
 and to be desired. Therefore, to be noble 
 and of pure fame and of high enterprise in 
 a centre where men were none of these 
 things, was to confound them by differing 
 
 3—2
 
 36 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 from them. Since a man can but measure 
 any quality by the standard of his own 
 capacity, bis own ideal (even if be be a 
 worthy soul) being but a little higher than 
 himself, one who thus soared above all 
 kindred judgment, whether Dutch or Eng- 
 lish, was of necessity held to be below 
 all judgment, to be within and not with- 
 out the common standard or capacity of 
 worth. 
 
 In after years, as knowledge grew, they 
 laid his bones beneath the altar-steps, in- 
 scribed a cross thereon, and wrote these 
 words : 
 
 *In festo sanctpe Helen^e, a.d. mdcl. 
 Hie expiravit pro populo mortuus.' 
 
 But they stalled the horses in St. Stephen's 
 first ; and Dyggorie's blood on the mare's 
 hoofs consecrated the desecrated aisles.
 
 INTRODUCTORY, 37 
 
 Dead, they flung his mangled body head 
 downwards across the creature's neck. 
 Thus they bore him back through Cut- 
 thorpe market-place, whence but now he 
 had smilingly entered into the church, there 
 to deposit his burden of thanks ; and so, on 
 to Slumsby village. 
 
 Out of the burnt water-mill on Sodden 
 Fen they had smoked three abject Dutch- 
 men, who had there taken refuge, know- 
 ing Dyggorie to be a man of milder and 
 juster views than his fellows. Thrust by 
 the fierce tongues of flame into the mur- 
 derous embrace of the Fen-men, the^e poor 
 strangers stood awaiting their doom. The 
 waters were rising rapidly, the sluices being 
 destroyed; the river was swelling until it 
 imperilled their present position ; only the 
 Western Dyke held good. Ah well, 
 Dyggorie was a grand worker.
 
 SS INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 That mangled head, which now lay 
 across the mare's neck, had planned that 
 safeguard thoughtfully, and those two dead 
 hands, which now fell helplessly down, had 
 delved it diligently when paid labour pricked 
 the soil. 
 
 ' Bury the Dutchmen, quick ! Save the 
 dyke ! Three live foreigners and one dead 
 traitor will stop the mouth of the Western 
 Ditch up to the Judgment Day.' 
 
 Soon done as said. 
 
 Four slight trenches are dug in the crest 
 of the dyke, lest one too deep should sub- 
 merge them all. 
 
 ' Hullo, Mistress Dailie ! we're sending 
 your goodman home with his friends. 
 He'll find a Dutch wife ere to-morrow 
 night I' 
 
 The woman made no answer. She placed 
 herself silently by the horse's side, raised
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 39 
 
 the honoured head with infinite tenderness 
 and maternal gentleness to her bosom, there 
 laid it down. Around her neck the strong 
 hands fell. As each tear dropped silently 
 upon the face, she wiped off with it traces 
 of the mud and of the wounds which had 
 disfigured it ; and Dyggorie Dailie went to 
 his rest with his firm calm features washed 
 by his wife's tears. As though a woman's 
 love could hope to atone for the injuries 
 done by the ingratitude of men. 
 
 After all, they laid him decently enough 
 in the trench which they had dug in the 
 crest of the dyke, and the woman bore his 
 head and laid it softly down, with her ker- 
 chief over the face. 
 
 When they turned to the Dutchmen, two 
 were found to be already dead. They had 
 drawn lots to kill each other, seeing no 
 reason to doubt the execution of threats,
 
 40 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 the horror of which they had too well 
 learnt to fear. One man, and one only, 
 remained. Xo merciful kinsman was there 
 to dispatch him. Dyggorie Dailie and the 
 two Dutchmen already lay in the rich black 
 earth. The waters were rising rapidly. 
 Through the broken sluice the floods were 
 pouring ; the foot of the trembling wretch 
 slipped; he fell from the drove into the 
 watergang beneath. There they left him 
 struggling for a few minutes more or less. 
 Could he not drown quickly enough in the 
 merciful depths of water ? His earthy 
 grave was ready, and they fished him out 
 insensible. 
 
 ' Dead !' was he ? or was he not ? 
 
 Dyggorie's widow pressed near to see. 
 They thrust her back. "Well, the man was 
 or was not dead when they pressed him 
 down into the damp, dark mould, and
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 41 
 
 tlirew the peats in on the top of his un- 
 conscious features as the sun set on that sad 
 May evening. It was two hundred years 
 ago. Can the sins of the fathers live as 
 long as that ? If so, then also may their 
 virtues. 
 
 The widow Dailie turned away into 
 Slumsby village, there to nurse back to life 
 the bruised and beaten lad, who had been 
 molested whilst ploughing, at his father's 
 commands, the newly turned-up acres of 
 Sodden Fen. In Dyggorie's sole heir she 
 cherished the seed bequeathed by the 
 martyred man, to blossom again in his 
 descendants, when Adam Daily, the 
 thatcher's son, two centuries and more to 
 come, trod those same peat-bogs by Dig- 
 gory 's Dyke, as the place ever after came to 
 be called. 
 
 Diggory's Dyke never broke. Its waters
 
 42 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 continued to rise and fall, according to the 
 nature of the seasons, with an untroulbled 
 surface twelve feet broad. A mound upon 
 its crest, long shown, marked the place 
 where Dailie and his poor Dutch friends lay 
 buried; and in process of time, as feeling 
 grew, Dyggorie Dailie the murdered and 
 maligned, became Diggorie Daily the 
 reformer and the martyr, the lover of pro- 
 gress and the lover of man ; and in one at 
 least of Dailie's remote descendants a sacred 
 fire was kindled by that vital spark inex- 
 tinguishable by the floods of Sodden Leam, 
 unquenchable by the flames that devoured 
 his only shelter in the Fen mill, for ' many 
 waters cannot quench love, neither can the 
 floods drown it.'
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 IN THE HEART OF A THATCHER. 
 
 ,ODDEK FEN, when Adam Janu- 
 ary Daily grew out of boyhood, 
 consisted of no less than eight 
 hundred acres — much of it first-class agri- 
 cultural land. A large farm, occupied by 
 Mr. Smith, parish overseer, waywarden, 
 and churchwarden, occupied its eastern end, 
 that lying nearest to Slumsby Church. 
 Fields of corn waved over its western area, 
 while on the north, where stood another 
 water-mill in the place of Diggory's early 
 erection, raisins: the waters to the height of
 
 44 THE BAIL YS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 the dyke, the rich peat-land grew boggy till 
 it gradually sank to the level of the reed- 
 beds on the south. From these reed-beds 
 thousands of bundles of osiers, yearly 
 gathered, added largely to Mr. Smith's 
 pecuniary profits. 
 
 The Smiths, having held this valuable 
 farm from father to son for eighty years, 
 hitherto had been able to afford to smile at 
 the tradition handed down by wrong-headed 
 country-folk touching the rights of the 
 people to Sodden Fen as common land by 
 virtue of Diggory Daily's gift; also at 
 the unspoken, but not unknown, personal 
 pretensions of James Daily, the tiler, as 
 the direct descendant of the said Diggory. 
 
 To these lands, to all the crops gathered 
 therein for fuel or thereon for food and fodder, 
 did James Daily, tiler andthatcher, of Slumsby 
 village, father of Adam January and of his 
 eleven brothers and sisters, firmly believe 
 that he could have made good his claim by
 
 m THE HEART OF A THATCHER. 45 
 
 reason of that undoubted descent from the 
 Slumsby martyr, had he but the means to 
 buy lawyers and parchments, stamps and 
 evidence; his faith in the power of wealth 
 never having been limited by possession, 
 and his estimate of the morality of the un- 
 known rich in matters pecuniary having 
 been deduced from that of the too well- 
 known poor. 
 
 Unfortunately James Daily, the tiler, had 
 found no friend capable of instructing him 
 in this matter. Beyond the indisputable 
 fact of his name and the carefully trans- 
 mitted record of his descent, he could 
 not produce one tittle of evidence whereby 
 to support his claim upon Sodden Fen. Of 
 more recent ancestors he had none of note. 
 His own father and grandfather had both 
 died in the infirmary of Cutthorpe Union ; 
 his mother was living there still. Such was 
 felt to be the natural end of old labouring 
 people at that time and place. Naturally,
 
 46 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 also, of family papers lie had not one scrap. 
 So far as he knew, he was the first member 
 of his family who had learned to read and 
 write. ISTot a letter, not a book, not an old 
 family Bible existed in the Dailys' cottage. 
 There was absolutely not one modern prop 
 whereon to hang the tradition handed down 
 religiously in this humble family from un- 
 lettered father to unlettered son, that all 
 the lands which Diggory Daily had drained 
 had been, by virtue of his contract with 
 Yermuyden, confirmed to him and to his 
 heirs for a perpetual possession ; and that 
 they, poor, struggling, little-thought-of 
 people, were the legitimate inheritors of that 
 much-coveted fen. 
 
 With regard to the claim of the villagers 
 generally, based upon Diggory' s dying 
 assertion that he had made a formal renun^ 
 ciation in favour of his fellows, James 
 Daily regarded it much as Churchwarden' 
 Smith viewed his, Daily's, special preten-
 
 IN THE HEART OF A THATCHER. 47 
 
 sions. The notion was a puerility scarcely 
 deserving the attention of such a com- 
 passionate smile as Mr. Smith bestowed 
 upon the mention of Daily's own name. 
 Indeed, the roof - mender never smiled. 
 Worn features, lean of flesh and tight of 
 skin, hardened with exposure to sun and 
 storm, are not given to much relaxation of 
 facial muscles. Men such as James Daily 
 laugh only when elated by drink, and smile. 
 never. A smile is the product of educated 
 features, and of educated sympathies. 
 
 Those who have had the opportunity of 
 winning for themselves friends among the 
 labouring people, know how widely spread 
 among them is this cherished sense of alien- 
 ated possession in the land; in property 
 generally, indeed, but in landed property, 
 more especially. The popular enthusiasm 
 displayed by the people about the ' Claimant ' 
 was but a sudden expression of this widely 
 spread state of feeling. His vulgar appeal
 
 48 THE DAILY S OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 went straight to the heart of many a 
 taciturn man and of many an over-drudged 
 woman in remote cottages in distant vil- 
 lages, and in back-rooms in squalid streets, 
 waking memories of ^ claims ' which they 
 had heard their fathers and mothers speak 
 of when they were but children : quickening 
 the inbred passion of possession, almost 
 stifled in them by years of hard deprivation 
 and harder silence ; wringing from their 
 unwonted lips the cry, born of an awakened 
 consciousness of their o^tl needs rather 
 than from any actual s^Tupathy with 
 another's possible wrongs, * Give the poor 
 man his rights !' 
 
 ' His rights !' Alas ! The saddest part of 
 the whole thing being, that scarcely one soul 
 of all those abject people has any rights 
 whatever which would stand the light of 
 day ; that they have merely confounded 
 their needs with their deserts. Classes 
 better taught make the same mistake be-
 
 IN THE HEART OF A THATCHER. 49 
 
 tween their deserts and their desires. That 
 somebody else has something which would 
 be his if he were only rich enough, or 
 powerful enough, to enforce his claim, is 
 the conviction which lies at the root of 
 many a folded nature, and wdiich would 
 give the key to the character of many an 
 unsuspected claimant \ whilst for the envied 
 rival, the rich man in possession. Fate, in 
 some other form, is all the while assuming 
 the place of another Dives, and holding the 
 equally unattainable in an equally unyield- 
 ing grasp. 
 
 This secret of the poor man is the one which 
 he relinquishes most unwillingly, credulous 
 ever of rivalry on the part of his equals, 
 and of antagonistic interests and sympathies 
 on the part of the rich. His very silence is 
 in many instances a sad admission that he 
 could expect nobody to believe him if he 
 spoke. Should such a man ever show any 
 inclination to relax the rule by which 
 
 VOL. I. 4
 
 so THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 people of another class are held to dislike 
 his pretensions, the tenderest care will be 
 needed not to check the tentative con- 
 fidence. The least hint at the outset that 
 his statements require verification, that his 
 proofs will need substantiation, is suffi- 
 cient to arrest the hesitating story, to thrust 
 back the timidly profi'ered confidence to 
 rankle in the jealously sensitive bosom. 
 
 Such a history was James Daily's ; and, 
 unfortunately, such was precisely the mis- 
 take which the Eev. George Apers made 
 when, on his presentation to the living of 
 Slumsby, he first took up his residence in 
 the Yicarage. The property of Mr. Smith, 
 the churchwarden, being implicated in 
 Daily's unwritten claims, it followed that 
 Mr. Apers immediately heard of them ; and 
 he made the fatal blunder of addressing 
 Daily uninvited upon the delicate subject, 
 without that apology which he would have 
 felt it needful to use in drawing any well-
 
 IN THE HEART OF A THATCHER. 51 
 
 born skeleton from its sheltering cup- 
 board. 
 
 Daily was fitting a lot of red pan-tiles 
 upon the newly-restored roofs of the Vicar- 
 age pigsties, when George Apers, coming 
 round to inspect his premises, found the 
 tiler at his trade, and in cheerful tones 
 addressed him thus : 
 
 ' So you're Daily, are you, my man ? 
 Happy to make your acquaintance. I've 
 heard of you from Mr. Smith. What's all 
 this he has been telling me about your 
 notion of being where he is if you had 
 your " rights " ? That sort of talk won't do, 
 you know. Why, I might just as well tell 
 you that I should be where the Archbishop 
 of Canterbury himself is, if I had my 
 deserts, instead of just having been ap- 
 pointed Vicar of Slumsby. You may 
 depend upon it. Daily, we've none of 
 us got any rights to anything better than 
 what has been bestowed ujjon us, or 
 
 4—2
 
 52 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 tlian we have been enabled to earn for our- 
 selves.' 
 
 Had George Apers, then, quite forgotten 
 how lately his own heart had resented such 
 philosophy, when urging his own claims 
 with some insistance, not indeed to the 
 Primate's wig, but to a certain little head 
 with a wealth of golden hair ; to a face 
 with eyes that laughed back answers, and 
 to lips that promised in smiles a solution of 
 the riddle of existence for some happy 
 questioner — but not for him ? 
 
 What about the college friend on whose 
 favoured bosom he had seen for an instant 
 Aurea Chapel's shining head reclining ? 
 What about that chosen man's superior 
 claims ? The conversion of that fugitive 
 memory into hard fact had acquainted the 
 young Vicar's lips with a bitterness in the 
 draught of life, such as, class prejudice 
 apart, might well have taught him sym- 
 pathy with poor Daily in his intolerance of
 
 IN THE HEART OF A THATCHER. 53 
 
 Mr. Smith's rights of possession as the 
 poison at the bottom of his vulgar pewter. 
 But George Apers had not yet grasped the 
 fact that a thatcher's heart could be read in a 
 vicar's ; and, failing that appreciation, failed 
 in all save in good intention. 
 
 ' IVe named neither my wrongs nor my 
 rights, sir,' said Daily moodily. 
 
 Then, tearing down with his thatcher's 
 hook an armful of rotten thatch from the 
 roof of a hitherto untouched building, he 
 flung it so roughly upon the yellow head of 
 his son Adam, who stood below waiting his 
 father's orders, that the dust and straw flew 
 in eddying circles round the young Vicar's 
 smiling countenance. 
 
 ^ Take care, my man, take care ; there's 
 no occasion to deal so roughly with the old 
 roofs because you're putting on the new. 
 I've been hearing all about the matter from 
 Mr. Smith. He has his rights, you must 
 be aware, as well as yourself ; he tells me
 
 54 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 that he and his family have held Sodden 
 Fen, man and boy, for eighty years : and 
 possession, you know ' 
 
 * No doubt, sir, no doubt,' said Daily, 
 making angry work with the thatcher's 
 hook ; ' Mr. Smith is in his rights, and I 
 am in my rights ; but the two rights make 
 a wrong, and that's all about it.' 
 
 ' Now, there I have you. Daily. Just 
 listen to me ' 
 
 But before George Apers, carefully trained 
 and recently fresh from college, could lay 
 down a simple code of ethics suitable for 
 proving to an inferior intellect that right 
 never was wrong in this world yet, a large 
 mass of thatch suddenly descended, this 
 time true and full, upon his upturned coun- 
 tenance. Dust and cobwebs filled his 
 surprised eyes ; Aveeds, moss, jDlants, and 
 straw, mingling together after the fashion 
 of antiquated thatches, stopped his breath 
 and choked his utterance.
 
 IN THE HEART OF A THATCHER. 55 
 
 The Vicar was a powerful young fellow, 
 and his spirit must have been something 
 less, rather than more, than that of the 
 ordinary mortal, if this affront to his man- 
 hood and his priesthood had not warmed 
 Ms indignant blood. Fortunately, the shock 
 was of the nature of a shower-bath, result- 
 ing in vigorous action for deliverance from 
 an immediate obstacle to sight and speech ; 
 and by the time he had freed his eyes and 
 his mouth, it might safely be said of George 
 Apers that the strongest feeling which still 
 stirred his bosom was of bitter disappoint- 
 ment at this unusual reception of his 
 well -intended overtures. He had meant, in 
 showing himself acquainted with the indi- 
 vidual history of each person in his parish, 
 to qualify himself to act as their most 
 intimate friend and adviser in matters of 
 every sort. 
 
 This had been Jessie Smith's advice in the 
 main. Jessie Apers Smith was his half-
 
 56 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 sister, who had accompanied him on his 
 removal to Slumsby ; and in Jessie, George 
 believed — with reservations, of course — 
 with reservations such as became a man 
 and a priest, and one exceedingly conscious 
 of both qualifications, in dealing with a 
 woman, and one of independent thought. 
 
 George had selected James Daily — that 
 goat among the Slumsby, sheep — as a fitting 
 subject for experiment in this mode of in- 
 fluence, and its ungracious reception now 
 disheartened more than it angered him. 
 
 The roof-mender appeared more sensitive 
 to subsequent reproof than might have 
 been expected. He left his work un- 
 finished, gathered up his tools, and handing 
 them to his lad Adam, answered, ' I took 
 oflfence, sir. I am sorry if I gave it.' 
 
 So sa}ing, he trudged ofi^ before Apers 
 had well had time to collect his thoughts 
 for a reply, or to scatter the straws which 
 still clung to liis clothing.
 
 IN THE HEART OF A THATCHER. 57 
 
 George Apers's disappointment, real 
 enough as it was in its way, was nothing 
 to the rankling bitterness which overflowed 
 the soul of poor James Daily as he turned 
 his heavy steps towards the two -roomed 
 hovel which sheltered his ambitions and his 
 griefs. He, too, had had his hopes about 
 this new-comer, who had succeeded a pre- 
 decessor imbecile from age. The thought 
 had been planted as a seed in his waiting 
 mind, that here at length he might find the 
 help he was ever furtively seeking ; the 
 fellow-man to whom, after close and patient 
 observation, he might some day confide 
 the story, or possibly even entrust the en- 
 forcement of his claims. 
 
 James Daily had never dreamt of directly 
 accosting the new Yicar. He would merely 
 have watched him, with a new faint hope in 
 his heart. He would have gone to church 
 no more than in times past, not under- 
 standing well how it could be possible to
 
 58 THE BAIL YS OF SODDEN FEN, 
 
 discern the nature of any man beneath the 
 official covering of a surplice ; but he 
 would have noted how the new Yicar dealt 
 with all such questions as might arise upon 
 his o^^Ti glebe, or in his own grounds, 
 wherein the claims of the labourer and of 
 the employer might be at variance. He 
 would hear what kind of master he proved 
 to his own gardeners or coachmen. He 
 would see how the Yicar' s sister approached 
 Mrs. Daily and the other village women ; 
 whether she came merely to teach them 
 what she had to teach, or whether she 
 admitted at least that there were things 
 wherehi they could instruct her. Such 
 details are easy enough to pick up in a 
 narrow village community ; and if, after all 
 this slow and patient observation, the new- 
 comers approved themselves to his, James 
 Daily's, judgment, he thought it just pos- 
 sible that the day might dawn when he 
 should confide to their judgment those pre-
 
 IN THE HEART OF A THATCHER. 59 
 
 tensions, the knowledge of which would 
 give the key-note to his character ; but 
 which his proud sensitiveness had hitherto 
 hidden with morbid jealousy. 
 
 As he turned moodily homewards through 
 the gathering dusk that day, James Daily 
 did not ask himself if the clergyman would 
 have greeted the lord of the manor by a 
 familiar and immediate reference to his own 
 most hidden foible, or to his pet grievance ; 
 but he deeply felt the injury inflicted upon 
 his self-respect, and, like the secretive and 
 unforgiving man that he w^as, he watered 
 this root of bitterness freely. 
 
 Centred in so narrow a self, it could 
 never occur to the poor morbid man to con- 
 sider the almost ludicrous disproportion 
 between the demands he was making upon 
 the character of another, and the response 
 which he was prepared to render. The 
 man w^as something of a pauper in spirit, 
 but from no fluilt of his own ; in the world
 
 6o THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 of mind, as in that of matter, lie had all to 
 receive and nothing to give. He came of a 
 family of paupers, whose pauperism had 
 been not a vice, but an inevitable outcome 
 of the conditions under which they had 
 lived. James Daily had never held out 
 his hard-working hand for bread, yet the lack 
 of self-respect engendered by the enforced 
 servitude, the underpaid labour, and the 
 workhouse death-beds of his ancestors, had 
 stamped its impress so indelibly on the 
 man's nature that dignity of spirit was diffi- 
 cult to him. The idea that he could come 
 under any moral obligation to render service 
 of anv kind to his fellows would have 
 seemed a bad joke to James Daily. 
 
 It was something that he should have 
 maintained himself above the ranks of 
 actual pauperism. His grandfather had 
 died, without question, in the infirmary of 
 Cutthorpe Union ; his father bitterly in the 
 same place had grudged his bones to the
 
 IN THE HEART OF A THATCHER. 6i 
 
 parish coffin ; but he himself would not die 
 there at all, having full confidence in the 
 power of his own labour to avert such a 
 catastrophe. Neither should the parish 
 bury him ; for at the same time that he 
 taught himself to read, in the yard of the 
 tilery at Cutthor^De, he had paid his first 
 sixpence into a Burial Club. By now he 
 had invested enough to have decently put 
 away twenty poor men in the style in which 
 his parents had been buried. Forty-four 
 pounds four shillings had he paid into that 
 club since, at sixteen years of age, disgust 
 at the gaping boards of his father's parish 
 coffin had entered into his soul. There 
 would be beer, bread and ham at his, James 
 Daily's, funeral ; all the unburied members 
 of the club would follow him, and eight 
 pounds at least would be spent first and 
 last. 
 
 This was a great comfort to James Daily, 
 more so to Susan his wife ; and was un-
 
 62 THE BAIL YS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 doubtedly a sure sign of progress. For his 
 son it must be reserved to take that further 
 step upward and onward which should 
 prove him free in spirit, if limited in action ; 
 no abject member of a down-trodden family, 
 but an intelligent sharer in the common 
 life ; an heir not only of those inglorious 
 ancestors mouldering in the parish boards, 
 but likewise of that true nobleman whose life 
 was given for others, in triumph, upon the 
 altar- steps in the parish church of Cut- 
 thorpe.
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 A FIRST IDEA. 
 
 ;RxiILING in the dust the hook 
 employed in tearing down the 
 thatch from the roofs of the 
 Vicarage outhouses, Adam Daily had 
 silently followed his father home. It had 
 not occurred to the lad to take much notice 
 of the straw descending upon the Vicar^s 
 head ; it had fallen upon his own yellow 
 locks also, and there was not that vast 
 difference between heads that there ought 
 to have been in Adam's estimation had he 
 been correctly brought up. His father's
 
 64 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 words about ' rights and wrongs ' had 
 produced a much stronger impression. It 
 was the first time that Adam ever remem- 
 bered to have heard his father speak thus. 
 That lads of fourteen or fifteen had 
 ^ rights and wrongs,' the struggle for bed 
 and board in the overcrowded cottage 
 dierein he was reared had \o\i^ ao-o tauo-ht 
 
 ^\ 
 
 Jd 
 
 Adam ; but that the years which emanci- 
 pate a lad from control of his elders should 
 not, as a matter of fact, bring to the man 
 the full investiture of his ' rights,' this 
 was a new idea for him — was not only 
 a new idea, but, in the kingdom of 
 thought, Adam's first idea ; for Adam 
 had hitherto, in the sense of reflection, 
 never thought at all, having got along 
 very well indeed without any such mental 
 exercise. 
 
 Adam was barely fifteen years of age ; 
 he was the eldest of all the tribe that 
 jostled each other in the tiler's cottage.
 
 A FIRST IDEA, 65 
 
 The head of every one of these youthful 
 creatures was certainly provided with the 
 due stock of brains ; but the simple 
 machinery of life in the Dailys' cottage 
 appealed so perpetually to the senses rather 
 than to the intellects of its youthful in- 
 habitants, the world that they found them^ 
 selves launched into was one so exclusively 
 made up of things indubitably adapted to 
 their healthy animal natures whilst difficult 
 of attainment by them, that the minds for 
 which nothing was provided fared worse 
 than the bodies in the struggle for sub- 
 sistence. 
 
 Adam's muscles had up to this date 
 followed the dictates of external prompting 
 with as little consideration as though they 
 had been those of some animated creature 
 of a lower species. Abstract ideas had not 
 as yet played any part in his conscious- 
 ness. If you are to reflect at all, you 
 must have not only something to reflect 
 
 VOL. I. 5
 
 66 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 upon, but also leisure wherein to ponder ; 
 and Adam's rough brown hands, as well as 
 those of his progenitors, had always been 
 forced into mechanical activities before they 
 had had time to question the nature or 
 tendency of their employment. Much also 
 might be laid to the score of inheritance : 
 to kee^D their own bodies and souls together, 
 afterwards to facilitate the same natural 
 process on the part of their wives and their 
 children, had been the onh' task assigned 
 to Adam's progenitors. 
 
 All this had doubtless been not without 
 its advantages. For generations it had 
 delayed the production of such an abnormal 
 being as a morbid or over- sensitive Daily ; 
 of a Daily with a conscience drunk with 
 the poison of doubt ; of a Daily with nerves 
 shrinking from present bodily suffering, 
 ready to project his fears of imaginary ill 
 from a suggestive present to a possible 
 future of horrible realizations. At the
 
 A FIRST IDEA. 67 
 
 same time that this state of things led to 
 the preservation of a hard-working, it 
 tended also to the propagation of a slow- 
 thinking race. 
 
 James Daily himself was, as we have 
 seen, the first exception to this rule. 
 Until he appeared no Daily had ever been 
 known to feel ' lonely,' or to be ' misunder- 
 stood ;' but the accident which cast him at 
 sixteen }^ears of age into the yard of the 
 tilery at Cutthorpe had inaugurated a fresh 
 era for his race. There he had learnt to 
 centre the attention vaguely wandering, 
 after the fashion of his fathers, over things 
 in general ; and the one subject of weight 
 in his family history naturall}' gave the 
 counterpoise to the hitherto uncertain 
 balance. From that time forth the tradi- 
 tional wrongs of his family in the matter 
 of Sodden Fen lay like lead upon his heart. 
 James Daily ate of the tree of knowledge, 
 there in the Lincolnshire tile-yard. He 
 
 5—2
 
 68 THE DAILY S OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 learnt to know fancied good from certain 
 ill ; and when he returned to his native 
 village again, it was as a changed man. 
 
 The circumstances of his return briefly 
 concern us here, as leading up to the present 
 history. The lord of the manor, Sir 
 Digby Weyland, father of the present Sir 
 Crowsby Weyland, impelled by motives of 
 philanthropy, as inculcated by a good- 
 natured young bride whom he had taken as 
 his second wife late in years, determined to 
 roof in his rotten thatch- covered cottages, 
 with brand-new tiles of Lincolnshire clay, 
 and James Daily was sent with others to 
 execute the job. 
 
 The cottagers, puzzled and doubting, 
 saw wdth dismay the roofs stripped over 
 their heads. Dirt, birds' -nests, moss, 
 weeds, eggs, and spiders, the accumulated 
 growth of years, both vegetable and insect, 
 dropped into their dishes, swept into their 
 hearths, filling their wash-tubs, mingling
 
 A FIRST IDEA. 69 
 
 with their food, and crawling upon their 
 pillows. 
 
 In vain did their landlord's amiable wife 
 promise the health, the light, the warmth of 
 years as the purchase of these discomforts ; 
 the tenants discovered that the tiles were 
 draughty, that they did not fit, that they 
 were over-hot in summer and cold as clay 
 in winter ; that they blew off in a capful 
 of wind, attracted the lightning, made 
 conduits for the rain, and stopped the 
 children's play in the narrow strip of 
 ground that used to be so dry beneath the 
 eaves. 
 
 The vague grumbling that had for years 
 been indulged in almost as a luxury over 
 the reeking thatch, gave place to lamenta- 
 tions loudly uttered over the bright red 
 tiles. Wearied with so much perversity 
 and amazed at so much inventive faculty 
 where he had least looked for it, Sir Digby 
 Weyland stopped the progress of reform ;
 
 70 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 whereon every cottager in Slumsby yet 
 dwelling beneath a straw- covered roof took 
 up the burden of complaint ; and it was 
 not until long years after, when the young 
 bride had been laid in a distant grave, that 
 the tide of discontent thus innocently 
 raised, sank again to its ordinary level. 
 
 Yet these very people might have blessed 
 the memory of the beneficent lady and her 
 well-intentioned lord had the prior lesson 
 but been borne in mind, that to thrust an 
 unearned boon upon a man is to lower the 
 dignity of the giver and receiver, and to 
 degrade the gift itself to the level of work- 
 house bread : seeing that a boon, to be a 
 boon, must be purchased by willing con- 
 cession on the part of the receiver as well 
 as of the giver, and that the person to be 
 benefited must consent to joart with time 
 or labour, money or moral inde23endence, in 
 return for the favour conferred. But if 
 you treat a man as you would treat a pig,
 
 A FIRST IDEA. 71 
 
 roofing in the hovel of one as you would 
 the sty of the other, at least demand no 
 variation in the tones of the animal's sub- 
 sequent grunts. In the secrecy of his own 
 heart, no doubt, the man will admit the 
 advantages of lying warm and dry at 
 nights ; but in proportion as he has pre- 
 served his own self-respect, he will dis- 
 honour drafts upon his gratitude, the 
 drawing of which he has never sanctioned. 
 Human benefits, in a word, must presuppose 
 human relations. 
 
 There was one cottage which James 
 Daily at that time unroofed, belonging to 
 one Hoston, a drunken thatcher. All day 
 long did this old man stand regarding the 
 demolition of roofs which his father and 
 grandfather before him had laid ; and when 
 it came to the turn of his own dwelling, 
 his wife and daughter had less reason to 
 shudder at the draughts which searched 
 their beds at night, beneath their temporary
 
 72 THE BAIL YS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 covering of a tarpaulin, than at the imbecile 
 rage and drunken fury of the husband and 
 father. 
 
 Hoston was a dangerous man to live 
 with at all times, and especially when dis- 
 pleased ; one given to venting his anger upon 
 a patient wife and simple-hearted daughter, 
 whose sole notion of good or evil fortune in 
 this world might be stated in the accident 
 of father's being drunk, more or less. On 
 the day on which Daily put on the last 
 ridge-tile he descended into the cottage, 
 and rashly, as it appeared to the women, 
 began to question Hoston as to the date of 
 the original thatching. 
 
 Now to be curious about the past, was 
 in itself an offence to Hoston. The family 
 bore a bad name in the village. Local 
 tradition was not favourable to its ante- 
 cedents. A strange story was told of an an- 
 cestor who had had nefarious dealings with 
 the walls of Diggory's Dyke ; and the man
 
 A FIRST IDEA. 73 
 
 who was foremost in instigating the building 
 up of the Dutchmen at the time that 
 Diggory died, was asserted in popular 
 dictum to have been none other than the 
 original Hoston. Like other villages, 
 Slumsby felt the need of a scapegoat, and 
 it chanced that the lot had fallen on 
 Hoston. 
 
 Daily's curiosity therefore inflamed the 
 old man's ever-ready passion ; but being a 
 coward as well as a drunkard, the brute 
 fell upon his daughter, who had ventured 
 to interfere betw^een himself and the powerful 
 young man. To have saved a woman from 
 another man's violence, even though that 
 other man be her father, is to have placed 
 yourself in temporary relations to her, 
 suggestive of, and provocative to, more 
 enduring affinities. So it proved in Daily's 
 case. He had yet ^yq years to serve in 
 the tile-yard, but he threw up his engage- 
 ment at considerable loss m order to become
 
 74 THE DAIL YS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 the protector and husband of Susan Hoston. 
 The sequence from this event to burying 
 old Hoston, who died a drunkard's death 
 in a ditch, to settling down for life in his 
 native village of Slumsby and to becoming 
 the father of Adam January and of his 
 eleven brothers and sisters, is easy to trace. 
 Just as easy is it to indicate the history of 
 the family up to the date at which this 
 story finds it. 
 
 The machinery of life as well as of pro- 
 duction was simpler in those days. One 
 man combined in his own person all the 
 requirements of his trade. From having 
 to do with tiles, Daily naturally came to 
 deal with roofs. From tiles to thatch was 
 a step facilitated by marriage with the 
 thatcher's daughter. So it came to pass 
 that James Daily became repairer and roof- 
 mender in general to Slumsby and the 
 neiofhbourino' villao;es. He was a clever 
 workman, and no jobs connected even
 
 A FIRST IDEA. 75 
 
 indirectly with his trade came amiss to 
 him. * Oven-tiles,' ' foot-tiles/ ' drain-tiles,' 
 and ' circulars,' led him, by a transition 
 equally natural, from roofs to floors, bake- 
 houses and fields. No man in Slumsby 
 was more constantly employed ; none 
 more steady, honest, and respectable : yet 
 withal he was the most unpopular inhabi- 
 tant of the village. Had the bad name of 
 old Hoston fallen to his share as the 
 daughter's dowry ? or was it sim23ly that, 
 having deduced from his impressions in the 
 factory at Cutthorpe a system of conduct 
 applicable to his daily experience, he sought 
 no advice, took no opinions, and was a 
 law to himself ? The general feeling about 
 him was recoo:nised when it was stated that 
 he was ' deeper than Diggory's Ditch,' and 
 that * he'd make a worse end than old 
 Hoston yet.' 
 
 Adam January had chanced to see the 
 light upon Xew Year's 'D^y. His father
 
 76 THE DAILY S OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 had therefore called him Adam since he 
 was his firstborn, and January from the 
 day of his birth. When his second son 
 Robert was born in February of the 
 following year, James Daily continued the 
 conceit ; and so on with all his children, 
 regardless of the periods of their births. 
 Robert February had been followed by 
 Koah March, and so on through sweet 
 Kitty j\Iay, down to Mary December. The 
 neio^hbours lauo-hed — one reason the more 
 for adhering to his own particular plan, 
 which after all had this advantage, that 
 it gave at once the position of any cliild in 
 the family, and even enabled its ao;e to be 
 guessed with some measure of certainty. 
 But James Daily's character for being; 
 blamably singular was increased by this 
 eccentricit}'. 
 
 In the Dailys' crowded dwelling there 
 were but two rooms, and the biowst was 
 but twelve feet square. This was the
 
 A FIRST IDEA, 77 
 
 lower one, which had a door, back and front, 
 straight out into the air. Here the father 
 and mother, three children and the baby, 
 slept. Here the family ate and the mother 
 worked all day. Here the cooking, such 
 as it was, and the scanty washing, were 
 done. Here all the children were born and 
 reared. Above, in a garret of the same 
 dimensions, but only eight feet at its 
 greatest height, lay Adam and no few^er 
 than seven of his brothers and sisters. 
 
 After her husband had died, the children 
 then being fewer, old Mrs. Hoston had 
 taken refuge in this garret, which she had 
 furnished and dwelt in for years. A ladder 
 with ten steps led up to it from beneath, 
 and you made your entrance head-foremost 
 tlirough a square hole in the floor. This 
 square had originally been closed by a trap- 
 door ; but old Mrs. Hoston, being struck 
 down suddenly by a fit, had died, not 
 giving time for her removal to the room
 
 78 THE DAILY S OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 below. ISTow ' the room ' was universally 
 felt by the cottagers to be the only proper 
 place to die in, as well as to be born in. 
 The square in the floor had of necessity 
 been widened, and the trap- door removed, 
 in order to admit of the passage of her 
 coffin ; Susan Daily declaring with some 
 feelinof that ' none should lav a fino;er on 
 mother to lower her neck and heels, as 
 though she'd been overcome with drink, 
 instead of giving way to a fit which might 
 happen to the Queen herself, and she be 
 none the worse thought of.' So through 
 the boards Mrs. Boston's coffin descended, 
 and the trap-door was never replaced. 
 
 The foot of the ladder which led to the 
 attic was planted behind the head of Mr. 
 and Mrs. Daily's own bed. There was a 
 convenience in this arrangement. It 
 enabled Mrs. Daily to call out reproofs to 
 her children above, without raising her 
 voice above the pitch of ordinary maternal
 
 A FIRST IDEA. 79 
 
 adjuration ; and it permitted Daily in the 
 early mornings to summon the lads who 
 were to turn out with him into the villao^e, 
 or who were to pick up stray coppers in a 
 variety of pursuits about the fields and 
 farmsteads. 
 
 When the late Yicar's housekeeper came 
 to see Mrs. Hoston, ^ looking as natural as 
 sleep,' after her death in that very garret, 
 she had expressed surprise at seeing the 
 ram come in everywhere through the roof 
 — one of the old thatched sort, which had 
 sufi^ered no change at the landlord's bid- 
 ding. 
 
 ' What a man ! to put new tiles on all his 
 neighbours' dwellings, and live peaceably 
 himself Avhilst the wet dripped in upon 
 his own wife's mother, as she lay an inno- 
 cent corpse ! What ! mend all his neigh- 
 bour's roofs and suffer his own to let in 
 the water ! Here was a man with a beam 
 in his eye !'
 
 So THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 Had the former Yicar's housekeeper been 
 somewhat more observant of the ways of 
 the people before she attempted to teach 
 them her own, she would ha\^e discovered 
 that the workman who exercises any 
 manual craft whatever, if he be not * a 
 muddler ' or ' an odd-jobber/ from whom 
 nothing better is to be expected, must have 
 arrived at a considerable degree of educa- 
 tion before he will practise that special 
 handicraft for any return but in hard cash. 
 The good woman might have spared her 
 astonishment and her remonstrances. A 
 person of her experience might have 
 observed that men of Daily's class will 
 exercise their trade for everyone's benefit 
 rather than for their own. 
 
 Further, it was characteristic of the man 
 in question that when the good three- 
 roomed cottaofe vacated bv the death of his 
 step-father, and tiled by his own hands, was 
 ofifered him, at the same yearly rental, on
 
 A FIRST IDEA. 8i 
 
 report by Mrs. Hoston of his increasing 
 family to tlie lord of the manor's steward, 
 James Daily refused it obstinately. Secondly, 
 that when the same well-meaning steward 
 wished to have repaired the roof of his 
 present dwelling, at the landlord's expense, 
 Daily refused to permit the man sent to 
 touch a straw of his thatch ; although the 
 agent was one whom he knew, and against 
 whom he was not supposed to nourish any 
 grudge. The neighbours after this thought, 
 if the subject w^as mentioned at all, that 
 Daily did a little botching to his own 
 thatch at nights, on the sly ; for, curiously 
 enough, he was rej)orted to have been 
 espied astride upon the roof, looking down 
 upon his children as they slept, through 
 the broken skylight of their attic. These 
 panes of glass set in an old wooden frame 
 had been let into the fabric of the roof, 
 even with the thatch, by James Dailj'. The 
 neighbours had warned him that the 
 VOL. I. 6
 
 82 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 drippings from the thatch would perpetually 
 leak through the frame, that a window set 
 in such a position never could be water- 
 tight. Daily was not a man to turn from 
 his own method ; and the first thinof that 
 the young Daily s had to learn, was to 
 avoid the drops of water that fell upon 
 them as they lay. 
 
 Large tufts of grass, freely blossoming 
 weeds, and thick patches of moss grew over 
 this dilapidated cottage. A splendid mass 
 of wall- flowers flourished in the niche by 
 the chimney. Yellow sedums peeped in at 
 the broken panes over the children's heads ; 
 below, honeysuckle and roses in season 
 shaded the leaded casements of the win- 
 dows. The whole was as picturesque and as 
 unwholesome as it was possible for cottage 
 to be. 
 
 Fortunately for the sleepers in the attic, 
 some panes of the skylight had long ago 
 been broken. A special catastroj)he now
 
 A FIRST IDEA. 83 
 
 completed the merciful process of destruc- 
 tion. 
 
 At nine o'clock on the night of the day 
 on which Daily first made acquaintance 
 with Mr. Apers, Adam and his brother 
 Eobert both lay wakeful, for different 
 reasons. After a period of disuse, stilts 
 had just come again into fashion amongst 
 the Slumsby youths; and Eobert Daily, 
 whilst his father and Adam were engaged 
 at the Yicarage, had discovered in one of 
 the outhouses there an old pair of drying- 
 poles, discarded by the late Vicar's house- 
 keeper. These he appropriated, carried 
 them home, and concealed them in the bed ; 
 and, being a handy lad, he determined to 
 produce them after dark, and to fabricate 
 them as best he might into a tall pair of 
 stilts. He had counted upon Adam's co- 
 operation, but Adam was sleepy, or said 
 that he was, and turned his face to the wall. 
 The fact was, he was thinking ; but how 
 
 6—2
 
 84 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 could Eobert understand that ! Robert, 
 waiting until his parents might be sup- 
 posed to be asleep below, drew forth his 
 prize from between the framework of the 
 wooden bedstead and the wall, to Adam's 
 ixreat discomfort. 
 
 In self-defence, seizing the poles, Adam 
 reared them up on end ; when, looking up 
 to measure their height with that of the 
 sloping roof, he suddenly caught sight of 
 his father's haggard countenance looking 
 down upon them through the roof in 
 ghostly silence. 
 
 Xever had Adam seen him thus before. 
 How should he, since he always slept as he 
 lay down ? In confusion and much fear 
 h€ thrust the long poles accidentally through 
 the skylight, in which some unbroken glass 
 yet remained. The results were disastrous. 
 The defiant face was immediately with- 
 drawn, whilst the mother, voluble enough 
 with mistrust as wide as her experience,
 
 A FIRST IDEA. 85 
 
 sprang out of bed below, at tbe sound of 
 crashing glass and shrieking children, and 
 scrambled up the ladder. 
 
 The scene which she entered upon was 
 startling. It was one which Adam never 
 forgot. Memory, as a matter of fact, only 
 carries that which thought has consciously 
 or unconsciously imposed upon it. This 
 was, therefore, the first of a succession of 
 scenes by which Adam resuscitated the life 
 of his boyhood in later years. The tiny 
 room ; the whitewashed walls scrawled all 
 over with ill -drawn figures by the young 
 Dailys ; the old-fashioned bed in which lay, 
 or rather crouched, Adam and Eobert at 
 the head, the two next boys at the foot, all 
 upon bags of straw, for the very good 
 reason that the mattress lay upon the floor 
 for the further accommodation of four 
 smaller children. Beside this mass of 
 yellow-haired humanity stood an earthen 
 pitcher, empty, on an old table which had
 
 86 THE BAIL YS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 lost its hind legs, but which Kobert had 
 hitched into the Avail. One or two lidless 
 boxes and a chair mth no back completed 
 the picture ; but this was not poverty. 
 The children were sufficiently fed, or nearly 
 so ; clean- skinned and healthy. The paucity 
 of goods was the result of mischief, and of 
 want of space, rather than of actual lack of 
 pieces of j)roperty. 
 
 Grandmother Hoston had furnished the 
 garret carefully with the remains of her 
 cottage. Mahogany chest of drawers, deal 
 washstand, large armchair, horse - hair 
 couch, and eight -day clock ; but all these 
 articles had followed her coffin down through 
 the floor, not only to give them the place 
 of honour, but also to make way for the 
 eight grandchildren who now slept in her 
 place. 
 
 Four of these at present sat up upon the 
 floor screaming with fright. The broken 
 glass had fallen upon their faces, and
 
 A FIRST IDEA. 87 
 
 naturally clutching at the fragments in 
 their waking terror, they had rubbed their 
 bleeding fingers over tear-stained eyes, and 
 now presented an appearance sufficiently 
 alarming to the half- angry, half- frightened 
 woman who rose in her night-things through 
 the floor. 
 
 Adam's blue eyes meanwhile wandered 
 from all this confusion to the space above 
 their heads, where his father's face had 
 looked ghastly in the light of the half- risen 
 moon, as he gazed down upon them in 
 silence, all the more impressive by contrast 
 with the noise and clamour which had been 
 awakened beneath. The still face vanished, 
 however, long before the mother had ad- 
 ministered comfort and reproofs to her 
 children ; and when, seizing the drying- 
 poles, she went to the top of the ladder, and 
 calling down into the darkness, ' Look out, 
 father ! Mind the baby,' threw them 
 clattering down upon the bricks below,
 
 88 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 James Daily answered by a dry assent 
 which seemed to come from the bed. 
 
 After Mrs. Daily had joined her husband 
 a conversation took place, which, falling 
 upon Adam's awakened intelligence, proved 
 his final introduction to the birth-pangs of 
 conscious thought. The sentences ^vere 
 few, and of trivial import apparently, but 
 Adam's mind took their impress as though 
 cut in marble, and retained them until the 
 day of his death. 
 
 His father spoke first, an unusual cir- 
 cumstance ; for, like most men of his class, 
 he left words for women, contenting himself 
 with power. 
 
 ' There'd be more peace out in the open, 
 listening to the wind in the rushes on the 
 Fen, than in the brangling o' your boys 
 and girls. There isn't a quiet one in the 
 lot. They're always ragging and raffling.' 
 
 * There isn't a crooked one in the lot,' 
 rejoined Mrs. Daily ; ' and plenty would be
 
 A FIRST IDEA. 
 
 glad to make 'em all good, from January 
 down to December, and not one that can't 
 take a beating when he's earned it. How'll 
 Ave call the next one, father ? Will it do 
 to begin on the days of the week, and say 
 " Sunday"? Granny, she believed the new 
 Yicar'd take it for a compliment, and it'd 
 make 'em feel at home at the Vicarage.' 
 
 'Granny' was James Daily's sole sur- 
 viving parent, who w^as still a well-known 
 inmate of Cutthorpe Union. Then, more in 
 remonstrance than in anger, James Daily 
 spoke : 
 
 * The fact's this, mother. The next child 
 that comes into this place, one goes out of 
 it ; and so on now, if it w^as to follow my 
 burial !' 
 
 Adam listened ; not now with his ears 
 only ; but with all his senses stretched to 
 the utmost. 
 
 Mrs Daily made no immediate reply. 
 Woman-like, she waited oj^por'tunity ; only
 
 90 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 slie snuffled, as Adam knew she always did 
 wlien most she felt like crying. 
 
 ' The fact is/ she presently said, with a 
 voice pitched in a plaintive key, 'those 
 four eldest ought never to've been born, 
 and wouldn't, only for poor father being 
 what he was.' 
 
 By which enigmatical speech ]\Irs. Daily 
 simply alluded to the fact of Daily's having 
 had to make her a home five years before 
 his time in the tile-yard was out, owing to 
 her father's drunken violence ; but to 
 Adam, ignorant of all this, and Ij^ing just 
 above in the darkness, the strano;e words 
 seemed full of terrible and mysterious mean- 
 ing. So he, Robert February, Xoah March, 
 and even jDretty ]\Iary Anne April, were some- 
 how to blame for their share of existence. 
 
 The poor lad liad already heard several 
 new^ things that day. His father's words 
 with the Vicar had rooted themselves in liis 
 memory ; and now there was his father, just
 
 A FIRST IDEA. 
 
 as tlie neighbours whispered, bestriding the 
 roof when all the village was abed — what 
 could it be for ? Not to mend it, evidently, 
 Adam knew better than that ; not to play 
 tlie guardian-angel over his children's 
 slumbers, a thing which was even less 
 likely ; but here Adam's certainties stopped. 
 The words which had reached his anxious 
 ears from below had served only to divert, 
 not to enlighten his perplexities ; no be- 
 trayal even of her necessary knowledge of 
 her husband's eccentricities had been made 
 by any expression of surprise on Susan 
 Daily's part, and Adam was left unaided in 
 the struggle with his own cogitations. 
 Formless and void were the ill-defined 
 shapes peopling his imagination ; but new 
 light was dawning in the chambers of liis 
 brain, although as yet it only served to 
 show him dim shapes and weird, moving 
 in a dread phantasmagoria of their own, 
 defying his attempts at once to grasp them
 
 92 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 or dismiss. Big sighs heaved his honest 
 chest. He did not rightly understand the 
 weight that lay there. He screwed his 
 rough fists into his round, wide-open eyes ; 
 then suddenly nudging his brother, sought 
 in companionship the solution of sorrow. 
 
 ' I say, Bob — I feels bad, I do. I've got 
 a lump in my throat, and I can't work it 
 up nor down.' 
 
 ' Hold your noise,' said Robert crossly. 
 He was sleepy, and justly vexed at the loss 
 of his stilts. Then Adam held his tongue, 
 and began to ponder over what this new 
 sensation meant, learning for the first time, 
 in silence, that one of twelve brothers and 
 sisters, and that one a Daily, could feel very 
 queer and lonely, even when sleeping four in 
 a bed, with as manv more on the boards. 
 
 In the progress of his race the onward 
 step which Adam took that night was a 
 stride of great importance. His father, 
 James Daily, was intellectually more ad-
 
 A FIRST IDEA. 93 
 
 vanced than liis wife, in that he was 
 able to sum up his opinions, wdiilst slie 
 expressed hers only by action ; but the 
 further stage of development by which a 
 man inquires into the secrets which he 
 finds in his own mind, reasons about the 
 views which he has formulated, holds a dia- 
 logue with himself, and discusses the matter 
 in his own double consciousness, James 
 Daily had not reached and never might 
 reach. That stage was reserved for his son. 
 Henceforward Adam Daily began to 
 consider not only Avhat he thought, which 
 was more than his mother and as much 
 as his father had done ; but further, why 
 he thought it, which was more than any 
 Daily had yet attained to. Mrs. Daily 
 didn't think ; she only acted. James Daily 
 both thought and acted. Adam Daily at 
 fifteen 3'ears of age began to reason about 
 what he thought, and Avliy he acted ; with 
 resultant consequences that shall be told.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE VICAPv S SISTER. 
 
 ^I^SHE new Yicar of Sluinsby was the 
 possessor of that fah' hair, those 
 clearly-cut features, and those 
 lono' limbs so o'reatlv admired in curates. 
 His appearance was so very much the right 
 thing that it might have stood in his way 
 wdth prudent many-daughtered rectors, but 
 for the counterbalancing qualification that 
 he was heir to a large estate in Devonshire 
 and to a considerable fortune. 
 
 Slumsby was a college living, and until 
 it fell to his share, George Apers had been
 
 THE VICARS SISTER. 95 
 
 the most popular curate in a neighbouring 
 town. His half-sister Jessie, too, who kept 
 house for him, also had her admirers, 
 though they were of a different type from 
 her brother's. 
 
 Jessie Apers- Smith was a young-looking 
 woman of about eight-and-twenty. It was 
 understood that she had early been parted 
 from her husband, and had lost her infant 
 child. Rumour said that he had been a 
 man who was below her in station, and who 
 was moreover given to drinking ; in any 
 case, she was one of those women, virtually 
 widowed, in whose lives there is felt to 
 have been a mysterious something, to which 
 only those near enough to keep silence have 
 learnt to give a name. But in spite of her 
 sorrows, and all the more for her sorrows, 
 her friends were accustomed to say of 
 her, that they found her so ' supporting.* 
 This epithet, savouring though it did of 
 material consolation, was yet no misap-
 
 96 TliE DAILY S OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 plication in fact, though it might be in 
 expression. 
 
 Mrs. Smith was admirably adapted to 
 supplement her brother's somewhat un- 
 finished characteristics. The things of 
 which he was most ignorant were precisely 
 those with which she was most conversant. 
 Whilst he had been studying classics, she 
 had been studying modern humanit}\ 
 "Whilst he had been devoted, masculinewise, 
 to the consideration of his own interests, 
 intellectual and pecuniary, at college — 
 cogitations harmless enough, but still self- 
 centred — she had been tasting the full flavour 
 of life, having grounded her hopes in the 
 fate of another. 
 
 George Apers was very loyal to his sister 
 Jessie ; admired her with brotherly par- 
 tiality, and had long kept the thought of 
 making her a home very near his other- 
 wise preoccupied heart. When outspoken 
 people ventured to hint to him that such
 
 THE VICAR'S SISTER. 97 
 
 fraternal devotion would be likely to hinder 
 the inevitable selection of a wife, he was 
 accustomed to make answer that he had 
 rather be upheld by Jessie's presence than 
 weighted with the necessities of a feebler 
 kind of woman. But Jessie was too far- 
 sighted and too wise ever to submit her 
 influence to this crucial test. The moment 
 that she saw her brother successfully en- 
 deavouring to attract, instead of placidly 
 submitting to attraction, she had long ago 
 determined to precipitate matters by every 
 means in her power. And her power was 
 great — all the greater for the absence of 
 obvious manifestations. She could not 
 endure that the failure of her own life 
 should involve the development of her 
 brother's in its consequences. 
 
 For the last three years she had only 
 been waiting, ever on the wing, ready to 
 take flight. The home that she called hers, 
 was hers in no sense other than the lodging 
 
 VOL. I. 7
 
 98 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 where she passed a few calm days and 
 nio-hts, in the vortex between two seas. 
 The great waves which had left her there 
 would bear her off again upon their crests 
 before long, as she clearly foresaw, parting 
 her from the brother at whose gentle side 
 she had found a temporary resting-place 
 only. 
 
 She had no doubt of her own perspicacity 
 in noting the precise moment at which to 
 relinquish her home and to precipitate 
 ' that other ' into it. Meanwhile, having 
 met, only in vain, with ' that other/ George 
 Apers was sceptical of her re-appearance 
 under any new form. Every man is so, 
 up to a certain moment, in itself no 
 different from scores of others to uninitiated 
 eyes. He reaches that moment, and all 
 is changed. But it is rare indeed that a 
 man chooses a wife with the applause — 
 nay, even with consent of his neighbours' 
 understanding, should his choice appeal
 
 THE VICARS SISTER. 99 
 
 not to their perception of material advan- 
 tage, but to their estimate of mtrinsic 
 worth. 
 
 * She will not be a bit better than all the 
 rest, only you will fancy her so, George,' 
 Jessie had once said. 
 
 * You are different, so why not she ?' 
 
 ' That has nothing to do with the ques- 
 tion. Whatever I am, it is very certain 
 the commg woman will in no particular 
 resemble me.' 
 
 And George was sufficiently imj)ressed 
 with the force of his sister's conviction not 
 to attempt to contradict her. 
 
 Although the subject had never been 
 mentioned between them, with a reticence 
 not uncommon in families, Jessie was well 
 aware of that golden-haired epoch con- 
 nected with the name of Aurea Chapel ; but 
 lookmg at its heroine with the dispas- 
 sionate eyes of a vexed sister whose brother 
 has been rejected for another, she held 
 
 7—2
 
 loo THE BAIL YS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 Sunny-hair to be altogether unworthy of 
 her brother George. Common- sense there- 
 fore led her to turn his thoughts perpetually 
 into the direction of there being yet an- 
 other maiden somewhere, destined for him. 
 Ignoring Golden-hair completely, she en- 
 deavoured to accustom his thoughts to the 
 acceptance of the fact that he was to marry, 
 and that soon ; and that the girl who was 
 to come was the one woman in the world 
 for him. 
 
 * If I could only succeed in persuading 
 him/ she thought. ' that the past was more 
 than half fancy, how much would be 
 o'ained!' 
 
 Jessie was not disingenuous in this. Even 
 her clear-sightedness for once was at fault. 
 DisHking the girl, she had been tempted into 
 the mistake of disbeheving the depth of 
 his feeling ; since women, whilst they can 
 understand any amount of enthusiastic de- 
 votion to a woman whom they themselves
 
 THE VICAR'S SISTER. loi 
 
 admire, are singularly difficult of belief in 
 the devotion of a man to the woman whom 
 they themselves hold cheaply, or with 
 whom they have no sympathetic affini- 
 ties. 
 
 x^o outsider of any uprightness of judg- 
 ment or clearness of insight could spend 
 five minutes in Jessie Smith's company 
 without coming to the surest conviction 
 that, whatever the mystery of her life, 
 Jessie's share in it at least must have been 
 that of a woman above and not below tlie 
 higher standards of moral rectitude. Xo 
 discerning mind could long be mider her 
 influence without realizino; that the waves 
 which had wrecked her so early in her 
 course, far from submerging, had but lifted 
 her higher. 
 
 In her case, however, as in that of others, 
 these were only the wider-eyed judges. 
 There were plenty of people around of 
 narrow experience, the prejudiced or the
 
 102 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 selfish, to whom Mrs. Apers- Smith was 
 smiply ' that odd woman who had a story.' 
 ' A story * to such excellent people, who get 
 on so admirably without one, seems to be 
 pretty much the same thing as spectacles to 
 a man who can do without them. 
 
 Further, these capable critics felt deeply 
 convinced that ' it ' — whatever form of ill- 
 luck the ' it ' might be taken to stand for — 
 ' it ' must have been all Jessie's own fault. 
 Were this to be taken othermse, their own 
 special freedom from the incubus of a 
 neuter pronomi could scarcely be held to 
 be meritorious ; an inference not to be 
 risked. 
 
 Then, too, Mrs. Smith was accused of 
 ' saying tilings,' of ' talking to make herself 
 remarkable,' of ' speaking for effect ;' and 
 these self-elected censors deej)ly pitied her 
 brother, whose kindness they held to be 
 strikingly manifested by his keeping ' such 
 a person ' in his house, although his own
 
 THE VICAR'S SISTER. 103 
 
 chances of marriage were certain to be 
 injuriously affected by the arrangement. 
 The perfectly complacent mothers of 
 thoroughly eligible daughters were the per- 
 sons most apt to be struck by this view 
 of the case. 
 
 It is unfortunately the case that a free 
 growth in worldly prosperity can seldom 
 be relied upon to produce an equally pro- 
 gressive development of moral judgment. 
 The luxurious spread of the vegetation 
 upon the sunny side of the wall is apt to 
 be a trifle rank. Eyes which have long 
 been limited to a narrow view, thrown up 
 in strong relief, mistake vaster objects 
 dimly discerned beyond their accustomed 
 range of vision. Nor is there any indi- 
 vidual more strongly objected to by the 
 woman who doesn't talk, than the woman 
 who does ; the non-talker usually adopt- 
 ing the peculiar position that the fewer 
 ideas she expresses the more she has ;
 
 I04 THE BAIL YS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 which might be true if thoughts were 
 coppers to squander or to hoard. 
 
 On all these grounds Jessie was not that 
 questionably genuine article, 'the univers- 
 ally popular woman ;' but upon the affec- 
 tions of a large body of her brother's 
 friends, both male and female, she had a 
 hold as strong as was her interest in them. 
 Of these were women with sympathies too 
 wide for petty jealousies ; and men with 
 hearts too free from personal vanity to take 
 fright at a woman's generously expressed 
 regard. If only Jessie could have buried 
 her past, she might have been again a 
 happy woman ; but, alas for that immut- 
 ability of the gone -by which is still the 
 saddest thing of the present I Numberless 
 rivers may mock us with the promise of 
 oblivion ; in none of their waters is there 
 any \artue. For all there is at last but one 
 river, one Lethe, one flood, for healing and 
 forgetting ; one stream — that of Death.
 
 THE VICAR'S SISTER, 105 
 
 Probably no two j^ersons would have 
 answered alike, nor would any one have 
 answered similarly on two different days, 
 any question about Mrs. Smith's personal 
 appearance. 
 
 She had not her half-brother's fair head 
 of hair, the perfectly indicated outline of 
 his features, the expression of his mouth 
 almost too refined for literal translation of 
 any but the best-assorted notions, the 
 modulations of his equal voice. Whilst 
 no one would have hesitated to own that 
 George Apers was very good-looking, and 
 most w^ould have added that he was as 
 good as he looked — thereby placing him in 
 the same category with a peach — about 
 Jessie's appearance, manners, and disposi- 
 tion, opinion had never been unanimous. 
 It was all a matter of taste, or rather of 
 opportunity. 
 
 On dull days, when she was out of har- 
 mony with her surroundings, Jessie Smith
 
 io6 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEX. 
 
 looked as commonplace as her name. A 
 sad heavy look clouded her eyes, her colour 
 became opaque, her voice lost its ring, her 
 features their play ; but if in the midst of 
 all this a friend came in whose voice told 
 her of hidden affinities, she changed as a 
 landscape changes — becoming no longer 
 a plain-faced woman, but a girl flushed 
 with excited feeling, eager with hfe. Her 
 very hair seemed to put on brilliancy of 
 tone, to change from a dullish brown to 
 burnished auburn. Her height seemed to 
 increase. She was rather a tall woman, 
 but she had an acquired habit of stooping 
 when alone with thoughts that were sad, or 
 with people that were alien to her, as 
 though borne down by an oppressive 
 burden. Possibly the brother mth whom 
 she lived was the only person capable of 
 really saying whether Jessie was a plain or 
 a handsome woman ; and he always declared 
 that she * could be just wliich she chose ^ —
 
 THE VICARS SISTER, 107 
 
 that when she was ugly it was her own 
 fault. Whereupon she would retort that 
 she would rather vary like the weather 
 than be always serenely nice-looking, as he 
 was, 
 
 ' The first time that I see you ugly, 
 George, I shall congratulate you ; for I 
 shall know that you are then a richer if an 
 unhappier man/ she had answered. 
 
 This was the lady at whom Mr. Smith 
 looked askance when, a few mornings after 
 the arrival of the new-comers, he called in 
 to pay his respects at the Yicarage. He 
 found the brother and sister in the garden. 
 George w^as smoking, Jessie was carelessly 
 plucking flowers. The Yicarage garden 
 was well stocked and old fashioned, and the 
 farmer joined them in strolling up and 
 down the narrow paths. 
 
 Mr. Smith was in no sense the typical 
 churchwarden. A humble deprecatory air, 
 rather than the confidence of office, dis-
 
 io8 THE DAILY S OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 tinguished the tall spare man ; who, with 
 his pronounced stoop, his thin white hair, 
 and his feeble gait, hung upon Mrs. Smith's 
 words as she initiated their somewhat 
 desultory conversation. Seeing woman- 
 kind from the point of view of the elderly- 
 widower, whose solitary j)cath has led him 
 through a long line of housekeepers, he 
 seemed surprised at Jessie's taking the lead 
 in the dialogue. He decided at once that 
 the Yicar's sister must be very handsome, 
 although he was not otherwise conscious of 
 the fact, since on no other hypothesis could 
 he explain female prominence in a conver- 
 sation. A woman who could conquer and 
 could maintain a position for herself in 
 virtue of her wits, lay outside the range of 
 Mr, Smith's very narrow experience. His 
 attention was so very much attracted by 
 her that he began to wonder how it would 
 be if he were to admit this unknown kind 
 of woman within the arena of his personal
 
 THE VICARS SISTER. 109 
 
 thoughts and feehngs — a narrow circle 
 enough. What would her dictum be, upon 
 certain perplexities which had much beset 
 him of late ? He allowed himself, as a 
 simple exercise of curiosity, and as a rehef 
 from pressing solitude of thought, just to 
 state his case mentally, whilst perpetually 
 glancing at her sideways from mider the 
 old-fashioned brim of the tall hat w^hich 
 marked his respect for the Vicarage. 
 
 Suppose he were consulting her about 
 his runaway son, the only child he had 
 ever possessed. Suppose he were some 
 day to tell her the story. Many a time 
 had he sighed at the apparent impossibility 
 of getting one human being to lay a finger 
 upon the least and lightest corner of the 
 burden he was carrying so wearily still, as 
 the years spun round. Suppose he were 
 to tell to this woman, who struck him at 
 first sight as no woman had ever struck 
 him before, how night after night in his
 
 I lo THE BAIL YS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 dreams, waking or sleeping, his son's face 
 came before him — bitterly, as he had seen 
 it last— flushed with drink, mad with 
 passion, his gun loaded, his finger on the 
 triofo'er, aiming^ at his father's head. 
 
 Would she say he was right in that lie 
 had turned the young fellow then and 
 there from his door, never to set foot upon 
 Sodden Fen again, although it would now 
 be twenty years ago in little more than a 
 week ? What would she say of the ill- 
 judged bringing-up ? What of the angry 
 ejection ? What of the unguarded entry 
 into life ? Wliat of the homeless man- 
 hood ? What of the fatherless thrust into 
 an unfriendly world ? 
 
 There was another side to these ques- 
 tions. What of the childless home on the 
 fen, tenanted by a lonely old man with an 
 only half-satisfied conscience ? It was bad 
 to be a churchwarden for ten years, and 
 only to have half a good conscience.
 
 THE VICAR'S SISTER. iii 
 
 ' Holding the plate brought it home to you 
 so.' Mr. Smith had often been tempted to 
 envy the dead and gone Vicar the senility 
 which dulled the pangs of memory and 
 regret, whilst it left the edge of daily appe- 
 tite no blunter than of yore. E'ow he 
 couldn't care for his housekeeper's pro- 
 vidings, though the mutton was pastured 
 on Sodden Fen, and the pike trolled in 
 Diggory's Dyke. He was saving all his 
 money, too, and the time was coming for 
 making a will. There was a sheet of paper 
 in his desk at home which, unwritten, 
 spoke volumes to him. Now, making a 
 will when you've got no children, as an 
 occupation is not to be distinguished from 
 tracing out your tombstone. For satisfaction 
 there is little or nothing to choose between 
 the two employments. 
 
 Jessie, therefore, catching Mr. Smith's 
 furtive glances of inquiry, once or twice 
 wondered what he was thinking about.
 
 1 1 2 THE DAIL VS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 Had he been a poor man of Daily's class, 
 she would have made him feel at home with 
 her quickly enough : but even intelligent 
 and ' supporting ' women are apt to over- 
 look the claims of the j)oor rich in pre- 
 ference for the more striking but often less 
 urgent needs of the richer poor, and Jessie 
 Smith had no suspicion of her companion's 
 moral destitution. 
 
 To have all, and yet not to abound, was 
 Mr. Smith's dark experience. His nearest 
 neighbours, the Dailys, had nothing ; and 
 yet from his different point of view, they 
 possessed almost ever}i;hing : health, 
 strength, children's laughter, busy days, 
 and sleepful nights ; regulated labour, 
 sufficiency of substance : no responsihility, 
 no penury, no care except such as came, he 
 judged, of their own making, when the 
 disproportion between their claims and 
 their capacities forced sorrow on them. 
 And yet there was no will to be made in
 
 THE VICAR'S SISTER. 113 
 
 the Dailys' cottage. No will, but there 
 were seven sons and ^n^ daughters. 
 
 There was no son in Sodden Farm, there 
 had never been a daughter ; bat there were 
 eight hundred acres of Sodden Fen, grow- 
 ing yearly more profitable. There was 
 money in Cutthorpe Bank. There were 
 buildings, and lands, and possessions, and 
 in the midst of all a poor shivering soul, 
 starved with solitude, crippled with 
 timidity, trembling with remorse for the 
 past ; an upright, well-meaning, tired-out 
 man, who would have given James Daily 
 the coveted eight hundred acres to-morrow, 
 for one true grasp of his own son's hand — 
 for one healing hour in his son's repentant 
 company, if only during that long last 
 hour his son might wait upon him as he 
 had but now seen Daily's yellow-haired 
 lump of a boy obeying with dog-like fidelity 
 the instructions of his ill-conditioned father 
 — for so Mr. Smith considered James Daily. 
 
 VOL. I. 8
 
 1 14 THE BAIL YS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 ' Slumsby is proud, madam, to welcome 
 a lady to the Vicarage at last,' said Mr. 
 Smith, with his old-fashioned notions of 
 politeness. ^ The late Vicar, like myself, 
 was unfortunately a widower, and obliged 
 to depend upon his housekeeper. My best 
 wishes for your brother are that he may 
 never require one.' 
 
 George answered, laughing : 
 
 ' Why, Mr. Smith, you are as bad as my 
 sister. She persists in wishing to see me 
 a careworn man with a sickly T\dfe and 
 twelve ill-brought-up children, for all the 
 world like the fellow who is tiling the 
 piggeries.' 
 
 * Yes, I do, Mr. Smith, in order that his 
 capacities for affection may be thirteen 
 times multiphed, in order that he may have 
 thirteen times the experience, and may be 
 thirteen times as mse and as useful to his 
 fellow-creatures,' said Jessie, smiling. 
 
 ' In order that self-regard may be thirteen
 
 THE VICARS SISTER. 115 
 
 times multiplied by family affection, in 
 order that sneaking self-love may be 
 developed into unabashed selfishness, claim- 
 ing to be legitimized by extension to wife 
 and family,' said George. 
 
 ' The lack of time and money might be 
 more than compensated by the increase of 
 sympathy,' she answered ; ' how can such 
 a young man be qualified to deal with 
 misery and vice who has had no troubles 
 except such as he has more than half- 
 invented for himself in order to enjoy 
 the luxury of contrast, whose notions of 
 poverty are theoretic, and who is as 
 ignorant as every man must be to whom 
 law has been a beneficent friend through 
 life, of the burning force of temptation to 
 set it aside, known to those only upon 
 whom the yoke has been laid, as they 
 cannot but feel, to their infinite misery, and 
 to the equal advantage of others ?' 
 
 Mr. Smith stared, and George gave her 
 
 8—2
 
 1 6 THE BAIL YS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 a questioning look ; but Jessie was too fall 
 of lier subject to be restrained by either 
 manifestation. 
 
 '• Have your teeth ever bitten mto the 
 flint stones? have your eyes ever looked 
 upon death — have you even seen it, George ? 
 No, I believe not ; why, Buddha's black 
 o-rain of mustard- seed might almost be 
 found in your house/ 
 
 ' What kind of grain was that ? Mr. 
 Smith asked. 
 
 Pedigree wheat, oats, and potatoes for 
 seed were well witliin his cognisance ; but 
 even if this outspoken lady were prepared 
 to assert that her knowledge of samples 
 exceeded his own, he did not feel disposed 
 to dispute her authority. The Yicar smoked 
 on complacently. 
 
 'What can you expect,' she continued, 
 ' when such a man, dear and estimable as 
 you may be, is set down to be guide, adviser, 
 friend to a mass of struggling, want-driven,
 
 THE VICAR'S SISTER. 117 
 
 hunger and sin- compelled people, to decipher 
 their ill-expressed griefs, to surprise their 
 hidden failures, to remedy their vices, to 
 resolve doubts which in them are oftenest 
 the result of having for generations been 
 offered, or even forced to accept, their re- 
 ligion dressed in a garb selected by classes 
 other than their own ?' 
 
 * I cannot see, enthusiastic preacher, 
 how I am to feel the grip of the law except 
 by breaking it : would you have me shoot 
 Mr. Smith, that I may know what it is like 
 to run the risk of hanging ?' 
 
 Jessie changed colour, and Mr. Smith 
 started. The illustration was particularly 
 unfortunate, although George Apers did 
 not know it. Mr. Smith cast a glance of 
 entreaty at the lady, the meaning of which 
 was apparent although the motive was not. 
 It said : ' Continue the conversation, and 
 cover my silence.' 
 
 ' You are jesting, George ; and I am so
 
 1 18 THE BAIL YS OF SODDEN FEIST. 
 
 serious. You have always accepted the 
 laws of the present social order, no doubt. 
 Most persons do so accept them, until they 
 press upon themselves. Then I am much 
 mistaken if every thinking soul amongst 
 us does not for the first time immediately 
 question them ; only after long struggle, 
 perhaps, to acquiesce in the obvious fact 
 that the realization of pressure is the an- 
 nouncement of need.' 
 
 * All this is elementary, Jessie. Your 
 feeling inspires you, but you are simply 
 animatmg the oldest truths with new 
 fervour.' 
 
 * Wait till you feel the oldest truths, then. 
 The things that }'ou have felt will always 
 seem to you new. It does not matter how 
 ancient the forms are, if only the life be 
 fresh. What would it matter to us if any 
 of our children inherited the precise features 
 of their ancestors ?' 
 
 ' Mr. Smith, you have sons, I believe ?
 
 THE VICAR'S SISTER, 119 
 
 Would it matter to you if anyone came to 
 you and told you as a fact that such and 
 such, a boy of yours was merely the repro- 
 duction of his great-grandfather who died a 
 hundred years ago ? It is the same with 
 the children of our thought.' 
 
 Mr. Smith shrank into himself, buttoned 
 his loose overcoat as if it were March 
 instead of June, and nervously stammered : 
 
 ' No doubt, madam — no doubt ; but I am 
 not in a j^osition to judge. I am, in fact, 
 a childless widower.' 
 
 ' Which gives us one more link in 
 common, sir,' she said, evidently touched, 
 and laying for an instant a hand upon the 
 old man's arm. 
 
 ' The fact is, my dear Jessie,' said George, 
 after a sudden pause, which neither of the 
 others seemed ready to break, ' that you have 
 a trick of speaking in that vehement and 
 frequently mistaken way of yours, as thougli 
 not even by twos and threes, but absolutely
 
 I20 THE DAILY S OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 as units, each individual man stepped forth 
 into a land where no footprints showed the 
 way, and where every fresh person had to 
 trace out for himself a fresh path in a new 
 world.' 
 
 ' My wishes for you are,' she replied, 
 *that you should not rest content with 
 following others, but that your life should 
 be such as to develop as fully as possible 
 all the sides of your nature ; that you 
 should not rest contented with being a 
 scholar and a gentleman, and a kind-hearted, 
 excellently meaning fellow, but a man fired 
 with divine enthusiasm for the progress of 
 his race, ardent in sympathetic feeling, 
 conversant with the mysteries of life, not 
 shrinking from the darker sides of death. 
 Then that pleasant face of yours will be 
 less fair in outline, but more beautiful in 
 fact, my brother.' 
 
 George threw away the end of his cigar, 
 and taking his seat upon the garden-
 
 THE VICAR'S SISTER. 121 
 
 wall, looked smilingly down upon his 
 sister. 
 
 ' How many men, my dear Jessie, would 
 be angry with your rash eagerness ! how 
 many more would waste good argument 
 upon you ! I do neither ; I simply admire 
 your pleasant enthusiasm, and note how 
 well it becomes you. It makes you what 
 you once were at twenty years of age.' 
 
 An expression of pain crossed Jessie's 
 features. The light which her brother 
 complimented her upon, his admiration 
 effectually quenched. 
 
 ' How long will men, even the best of 
 brothers, continue to silence women by 
 personal reference, George ? And how 
 often am I to entreat you not to touch upon 
 the past ? It is all very well for you 
 lightly to refer to your five-and-twenty 
 years ; but my past does not belong to 
 myself.' 
 
 In an instant the kind-hearted man was
 
 122 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 beside her ; and to save his feehngs, Jessie 
 stifled further expression of her own. This 
 woman, who had just been wishing such 
 troublesome experiences for him, would not 
 momentarily wound him by allowing him 
 to see that he had wounded her. 
 
 An interruption at tliis moment was not 
 inopportune. As Mr. Smith was taking 
 his leave, a voice behind them said : 
 
 ' If you please, here's the last old lady's 
 drying-poles. Mother sent 'em to you. 
 She says our Bob took 'em, which he might 
 have known better !' 
 
 Jessie turned and saw behind her a lad 
 whose hair was as fair as her brother's, but 
 tanned by wind and weather ; whose eyes 
 were as blue, but instead of shining forth 
 certainties, showed only dim wonder ; whose 
 whole sturdy frame, rough hands and 
 breadth of face, spoke him just what he was, 
 an honest, hard-working, and slow-thinking 
 lad.
 
 THE VICAR'S SISTER. 123 
 
 ' Come forward here, my boy, and tell us 
 what you want.' George Apers spoke, 
 leaning back comfortably upon the garden- 
 wall, and smiling at his sister. ' Now, Jessie, 
 practise some of your theories — quick! 
 Why, this is the lad who was working with 
 his father at the pigsties, yesterday ! 
 What's all this about now, my man ?' 
 
 Adam then related in slow and confused 
 speech how his brother Bob, coming to 
 bring their father's dinner, had seen and 
 appropriated the old poles, and how his 
 mother had sent them back. Of all that 
 had happened in consequence, he said 
 nothing, though he was thinking much. 
 
 Now to be called upon to practise what 
 you have just been preaching, for the edifi- 
 cation of your hearers, is to to be placed 
 in evidence sufficiently embarrassing, and 
 Jessie felt it ; she therefore beckoned the 
 lad to follow her to the old washhouse 
 whence the poles had been taken.
 
 124 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 ' What did your Bob want them for ?' 
 she asked. 
 
 ^ For making stilts.' 
 
 * Don't they make stilts doT\Ti in your 
 village ?' 
 
 ' Aye, grand ones, at Master Sadd's.' 
 
 ' Then would your Bob like a pair 7 
 
 Adam's eyes grew rounder still with 
 wonder. 
 
 ' Aye,' he rej)eated, with a world of 
 astonished gratitude in the tone. 
 
 ' Come with me, then, and show me 
 where Mr. Sadd Hves ; don't you want 
 some too ?' 
 
 The boy was silent. 
 
 Thinking he had not understood her, 
 Jessie repeated the question. 
 
 Adam seemed puzzled for an answer. 
 
 * Not now,' he stammered. 
 
 'Not now ! Why not now ? Can't 
 you tell me, or would you rather not ?' 
 What Adam longed to utter was liis
 
 THE VICARS SISTER. 125 
 
 trouble : in the first place that he ' ought 
 never to have been born ;' in the second, 
 that he was to go away to make room for 
 the thirteenth comer. The big ' lump ' 
 coming back into his throat, he was so 
 choked he could not speak. Even had he 
 dared to utter his feelings, he did not know 
 how to express them. He referred all his 
 grief to physical causes. Modern research 
 perpetually tightens the links which con- 
 nect physical and mental phenomena. Adam 
 had arrived at similar conclusions as a child 
 learns how to walk, without any reasoning at 
 all. For him it was an untaught axiom of 
 elementary experience. Many a good dog 
 knows more than his master could with 
 safety be called upon to prove. 
 
 When, therefore, Adam spoke, it was to 
 blurt out words which astonished his 
 hearer. 
 
 ' I'd liefer have sumthen to eat : I'm 
 hungry.'
 
 126 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 He was not hungry in the least. He had 
 had a larger dinner than common. The 
 hunger was of his heart for sympathy ; but 
 that he did not know. 
 
 ^ You want something to eat ! Well, I 
 will give you that too, gladly, if you want 
 it ; but you look like a well-fed boy 
 enouo'h.' 
 
 She stopped at the baker's, and gave him 
 two rolls. 
 
 Adam ate every mouthful, for he could 
 always eat all the food that came in his 
 way. 
 
 * Now, if you feel better,' said Mrs. Smith, 
 in a friendly tone, ' tell me what is your 
 work ? What are you going to be ?' 
 
 ' I don't care for nothing, if I can't be a 
 gardener,' the lad answered, this time rapidly 
 enough. ' This is where we live. I trained 
 every one of those roses myself. There's 
 sorts you haven't got up at your place. I 
 can graft 'em, too, so as you wouldn't know
 
 THE VICARS SISTER. 127 
 
 I wasn't taking eighteen shillings a week — 
 mother says so, and so does Sir Crowsby's 
 man. He learned me how ; his joints kind 
 of stiffened, and his feel for the flowers 
 went out of his fingers.' 
 
 ' Was that how you learnt gardening, 
 Adam r 
 
 ' Mostly ; I'm often down at the Ferry, 
 ''Dripping Ferry" — that's what they call 
 the old Manor House where Sir Crowsby 
 Weyland lives. He ain't there much, only 
 in summers ; but the gardener is expecting 
 of him 'fore long, and he've had me down 
 there, helping him to tidy up a bit. He 
 gets the rheumatics awful; and when the 
 young gentlemen comes doAvn — there's five 
 on 'em, you know — along with their mother, 
 as is Sir Crowsby's sister, and a widow 
 lady, they do play the poor old chap such 
 dreadful tricks. They'd call 'em a bad lot, 
 if they was one of us. I'd give a beating 
 to any one o' my little brothers as I caught
 
 128 THE DAIL YS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 rafflino; about 'lono' o' them. Bob and me — 
 we're forced to stand 'em, 'cos we meets 'em 
 in the way o' business ; but we don't take no 
 notice o' their wickedness — no more does 
 their mother, nor their uncle. The}^ flogs 
 'em at school, so I've heard tell. Father 
 'ud turn round pretty quick if anyone was 
 to lay a finger on us at school or any- 
 wheres else ; but then we've been better 
 brought up, as mother she often says. 
 There's mother, leaning against the door. 
 That's our baby T 
 
 Thus introduced, Jessie stepped up to 
 the cottage, and Susan Daily stood before 
 her.
 
 CHAPTER TV. 
 
 SUSAN DAILY S VIEWS. 
 
 OU'RE the first person I've 
 called upon in the villao^e, 
 Mrs. Daily/ said Jessie, step- 
 ping under the shelter of the cottage 
 porch. 
 
 Susan Daily, who, by reason of her 
 husband's well-known independence of cha- 
 racter, was used to being always the last, 
 answered what she took to be the only con- 
 ceivable object of the visit. 
 
 ' Do you want to make a picture of the 
 house ?' 
 
 VOL. I. 9
 
 130 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 The cottage was indeed a tempting object 
 for a sketch, with its low roof heavily 
 thatched to a foot deep, the thatch grown 
 over with flowers, the broad eaves and the 
 narrow casements, the porch upheld by 
 rustic poles supporting two benches — real 
 oak benches, not common deal such as 
 misrht be found in the Manor House 
 kitchen. There were red-tiled edges to the 
 garden borders too ; and the beds themselves 
 were filled with flowers, than which the 
 Vicarage garden could show none finer, 
 any more than it could vie with the luxuri- 
 ant roses and creeping-plants that grew 
 right up into the windows, and over the 
 roof, and peeped in at the broken skylight 
 of Adam and his brothers' garret. But, 
 oh ! the ditch that stagnated right in front 
 of the cottage, like a moat defending a 
 castle wall, with only a stone across it by 
 way of a bridge. Visitors to Slumsby were 
 always eloquent on the subject of that par-
 
 SUSAN DAILY'S VIEWS. 131 
 
 ticular ditch. It was a fatal drawback to 
 amateur artists, who annoyed Mr. Daily by 
 desiring to transfer his cottage to their 
 drawing-boards ; but Jessie was not one of 
 these. 
 
 ' N^o, I do not care to paint the cottage/ 
 she replied ; ' I would rather make a picture 
 of your baby. What's her name ? Mary 
 December !' 
 
 Then followed the story of the names, 
 lengthened by Susan Daily's deprecatory 
 comments upon the neighbours' criticisms ; 
 such as : 
 
 ' Let everybody say what they liked, 
 they would be proud enough o her boys if 
 they had them ; there were plenty that 
 couldn't get through the days of the week, 
 let alone the months of the year, and not 
 one missing.' 
 
 ' Ah ! Mrs. Daily, I never had but one, 
 and that one is " missing,'* ' answered the 
 Vicar s sister, with tears in her voice. 
 
 9—2
 
 132 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 Susan Daily felt it manners to make no 
 comment upon what must, she felt sure, 
 have been a lady's bad management ; but 
 she gave up her clean, bright baby into the 
 stranger's arms. 
 
 ' Now that's the case with Master Smith,' 
 she said presently. ' He never had but one, 
 and that one's been missing these twenty 
 years. My mother used to tell the tale. 
 She was helper there once.' 
 
 'That is a tale I want to hear. Will 
 you tell it me ? I have a good reason for 
 asking it. I am not a gossip, and I am 
 sure you cannot be one either, with twelve 
 children all kept so clean and well cared 
 for.' 
 
 Susan Daily hastened to explain, in local 
 dialect, that she ' never went out rucking,' 
 i.e. gossiping ; then she told her visitor 
 the unhappy story of poor Mr. Smith's 
 runaway son. 
 
 Before it was ended, her visitor, turn-
 
 SUSAN DAILY'S VIEWS. 133 
 
 ing her back to tlie sunlight, had seated 
 herself in the shade of the open door- 
 way. When it was done, she asked 
 abruptly : 
 
 * Do you ever work for Mr. Smith now, 
 as your mother did before you ?' 
 
 ' Daily'd see me streeked first, before I 
 did service on Sodden Fen, you may depend 
 upon that!' was the ready answer. Then 
 wife-like, forestalling accusation of an 
 unpopular husband by defiant excuses, she 
 irrelevantly continued : ' But there's not 
 another husband in Slumsby or out of it, 
 high or low, rich or poor, that gets out of 
 his bed in all weathers, wet or fine, cold or 
 hot, to wash and dress a lot of little children, 
 and give 'em their breakfasts that his wife 
 may lie in bed one day in seven. When 
 any of your masters does that, come and 
 let me know, is what I says, and I'll own 
 that you've got a husband even to mine, 
 and no sooner.'
 
 134 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 ' Mrs. Daily/ said Jessie, * your husband 
 must be a very good man.' 
 
 Susan Daily stopped, and gasped with 
 surprise. For the first time in sixteen 
 years she found her defence of her husband 
 uncalled for by the recognised voice of 
 authority in Slumsby. It was ever ' Daily 
 the character ;' ^ Daily the defiant ;' ' Daily 
 with his wrongs ;' ' Daily with his levelling 
 opinions ;' ^ Daily with his independence ; 
 * Daily who would, if he could, be as 
 dano^erous as he was disaoTceable.' Sur- 
 prise and gratification nearly choked the 
 simple wife. All Daily's virtues hitherto 
 had looked far too much like vices, when 
 viewed as the old Yicar's curates and 
 his housekeeper used to view them, through 
 the windows of the church which he never 
 entered ; and his wife whilst defending him, 
 woman-like, held him more than half guilty, 
 and pitied herself confusedly for the bend 
 that her lot necessarily took to his ' ways.'
 
 SUSAN DAILY'S VIEWS. 135 
 
 Doubt of her visitor's judgment, however, 
 mingled with certainty of her good 
 manners, in Susan Daily's mind, as she 
 answered : 
 
 * Yes, he is as good as I could look for, 
 ma'am ; but I'm free to wish you a better. 
 Though I don't know who you are, nor I 
 don't know w^here you come from, yet I 
 know this, that you speak like a sister to 
 me!' 
 
 ' If I might have as good a one, Mrs. 
 Daily, I should be a richer woman than I 
 am now, and a happier.' 
 
 When others depreciated her husband, 
 Susan Daily felt it to be only her duty to 
 set him up upon a pinnacle ; but when quite 
 unexpectedly he elsewhere found an advo- 
 cate, she was sensible that it was only 
 manners to take him down a bit. This 
 recognition of his merits was all the more 
 startling to her, owing to the quarter from 
 whence it came. As an emissary from the
 
 136 THE BAIL YS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 Yicarage the old housekeeper used, indeed, 
 to look in from time to time, but it was 
 always to remonstrate about this very habit 
 of ' using the sacred day of rest to act the 
 sluggard ;' and the word ' sluggard/ as 
 applied to her incessantly active self, Susan 
 Daily could not put up with. Agitated, 
 but unconvinced, she had invoked her 
 husband. 
 
 ' Do it strike you as true, that what she 
 said ?' he had asked. ' Do you think she 
 can feel in her bones better than you, 
 whether it will do you most good to be 
 lying in yer bed one morning in the week, 
 with the baby tucked up in yer arms, and 
 all the little uns nicely got up and sent 
 out to school or to j)lay, or to be crouched 
 down on the free stones, envying the 
 church company their fine carpets and 
 cushions, with the baby wailing at home (for 
 they won't let you hush it up in the church 
 except when it goes to be christened ; ye'U
 
 SUSAN DAILY'S VIEWS, 137 
 
 have to turn to the chapel for that), and 
 the t'others tumbling each other head-fore- 
 most down the ladder ?' 
 
 ' You'd be there to speak sense to 'em.' 
 ' Not I, mother. I work 'em up on 
 Sundays that you may lie abed. If you 
 stir you may do your own w^ork, and I'll 
 lie my length ; I don't meddle in it to 
 pleasure myself, nor yet to please those 
 that are thinking themselves my betters. 
 I get up to do my duty by you, as I pro- 
 mised.' 
 
 After w^hich Susan Daily gave up all 
 attempt at further ventilation of the matter, 
 for she was an ingenuous creature, too much 
 occupied with her family to be more than 
 momentarily exercised by the discrepancies 
 wdiich existed between wdiat her husband 
 held to be right, and wdiat the village 
 authorities inculcated. She had a habit of 
 speedily relinquishing all attempt at mental 
 solution of any such question, in favour of
 
 138 THE BAIL YS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 a practical conclusion based upon solid 
 grounds of alFection and expediency. 
 
 ^ Daily was a good husband and a good 
 father, and he had a right to be master if 
 he chose/ The Susan Daily s who convert 
 unmanageable dilemmas into very simple 
 deeds, show results none the less logi- 
 cally proven because they would be 
 utterly incapable of demonstrating the 
 process by which they have arrived at 
 their conclusions. 
 
 Except in action, Susan Daily was 
 inarticulate; there, she was eloquent enough. 
 She washed her children's faces, and was 
 not unmindful of their manners. No mean 
 tricks were permitted in her cottage. iN'o 
 nasty words might soil her children's lips. 
 Perhaps she did not go the most direct way 
 to work ; she was often inconsistent in 
 action, and inconsequent in speech ; yet she 
 brought up a large family, with pink 
 cheeks and clean hair, all strong and all
 
 SUSAN BAIL Y '5 VIE WS. 1 39 
 
 healthy ; fairly clothed, completely washed, 
 sufficiently fed, not entirely untrained or 
 unguided ; more likely in the road to good 
 than in the way to evil. 
 
 If by our actions we must stand or fall, 
 what more would you have of a village 
 wife ? 
 
 Jessie did not try to instruct her. She 
 did not attempt to moralize. She wanted 
 to understand these people's ways, to learn 
 their thoughts as she already admired their 
 virtues. Thus, possibly, and thus only, 
 might her wider intelligence and her higher 
 standard of action one day prove of service 
 in extending and in raising theirs. 
 
 And Adam, what does he do ?' she 
 inquired. 
 
 ' The same as all the rest, ma'am — what 
 he can ; sheep-tending in the meadows, 
 leading horses on the farms, cutting and 
 stacking peat on the Fens, fossil-diggmg 
 now and again, or following his father when
 
 I40 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 there's iiotMng else. He'll be a great loss 
 to me, will Adam ; but lie'll be bound to 
 go for a rough-moulder m the tilery at 
 Cutthorpe. He mustn't cross his father, 
 and Daily's set his mind on keeping 'em 
 down to a dozen. He says he haven't 
 stretched his length in bed these four years, 
 by reason of the lot of little ones I'm forced 
 to tuck up at the foot. It's a pity for 
 Adam, too, for he's such a lad for a garden ; 
 and Sir Crowsby Weyland's gardening 
 man's laid by, and a lad wanted at Sodden 
 Farm ; but father's not to be ruled about 
 Sodden Farm.' 
 
 ^ There, then,' said Jessie to herself, ' is 
 the probable secret of Adam's " hunger ;" ' 
 but her next question was abrupt, and 
 apparently irrelevant. 
 
 * Mrs. Daily, what's a decoy ?' 
 
 Susan Daily explained that it was a 
 sheltered pool in the Fens, in which tamed 
 ducks were kept for the purpose of attract-
 
 SUSAN DAILY'S VIEWS. 141 
 
 ing wild-fowl, to be netted ; that a well- 
 trained dog was needed to help, used to 
 jump over the fences or pipes — called thence 
 a ' piper ' — too cunning to bark or disturb 
 the strange fowl ; that her father and the 
 other men about the place used to find lots 
 of sport there once, but that now it was 
 going out, and they didn't take ten where 
 they used to take a hundred. 
 
 Was there any decoy left near Slumsby ? 
 Mrs. Smith was anxious to visit one. 
 
 Yes. There was one, but only one ; 
 and that was on Sodden Fen, at the 
 southern extremity, quite a mile from the 
 farm. You picked your way to it over 
 the ' Hards,' after crossing Diggory's Dyke. 
 It was a lonely place, and you had to 
 get leave of the owner to go there at all, 
 for fear of disturbing the birds ; but there 
 wouldn't be any sport till November. 
 
 Mrs. Smith didn't want to see the sport ; 
 she wanted merely to visit the decoy.
 
 142 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 Havinof obtained this information, she 
 then went on into the village to gratify 
 Robert's passion for stilts ; and taking Adam 
 with her, tried also to satisfy his less 
 obvious needs. In this attempt, however, 
 she again failed. The moment had not as 
 yet come in which the gro^\i:h of personal 
 consciousness would compel Adam to speak 
 of himself. 
 
 That a great trouble, the existence of 
 which he had not known hitherto, had in 
 years gone by pressed upon his jDarents, 
 was the inference which Adam drew from 
 the conversation that he had overheard the 
 niofht before ; that circumstances had some- 
 how been against them, had possibly even 
 been too hard for them. A great awe and 
 pity filled the boy's heart. The form in 
 which the words were put served to deepen 
 this conclusion. ' The fact is, those four 
 ought never to have been born, and 
 wouldn't have been, but for father's being 
 what he was.'
 
 SUSAN DAILY'S VIEWS. 143 
 
 Adam felt as if he, too, liad had his share 
 in that past sorrow ; he and Robert and 
 Noah and Kitty had all somehow been the 
 guilty ones, had all been partakers in that 
 affliction. The son of an absolutely sober 
 man, he had never understood that his 
 mother's father could have been a degraded 
 brute who had turned his only daughter 
 out of doors, and had died a drunkard's 
 death in a ditch the year before Adam was 
 born. 
 
 Yet Adam met his parents on the morning 
 of that new mental dawn with none of the 
 shamefacedness which would, it is to be 
 feared, have beset boys educated in carefully 
 selected schools or in jealously guarded 
 homes. One thing his loyal heart had 
 immediately dictated with unquestioning 
 celerity of decision ; it was, that no word 
 of what he had overheard should ever reach 
 his brothers' ears throuo;h him. Unlike 
 better born and richer youths, he had
 
 144 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 never learnt to steal from his elders for 
 secret discussion facts which they presum- 
 ably might have desired to withhold. Over- 
 hearing in that tiny house was no sin to 
 stain the conscience. A home so narrow 
 as to admit of no concealments precluded 
 the entrance of a whole code of unwritten 
 laws provided by more complex conditions 
 of existence. Now, first, a secret had entered 
 into it — a secret felt by Adam not as an 
 evil, but as a misfortune. 
 
 Adam had met one of the dark problems 
 of life in his village under the guise of ' a 
 misfortune,' spoken of in free but guarded 
 language over cottage gates. Or, more 
 concretely still, among his own playmates 
 there had not been wanting an especial boy 
 or girl at whom he had seen the finger 
 pointed as briefly ' a misfortune.' ' A 
 terribly lax code of morals ?' Possibly, 
 but, at least, out of its deficiencies this 
 mercy grew, that it stained the soul of no
 
 SUSAN DAILY'S VIEWS. 145 
 
 observant boy or girl with an ill-defined, 
 abhorred, and yet fascinating sense of ill. 
 The village parlance taught a lesson that 
 many a man and woman never learns in a 
 long life of artificially guarded experiences, 
 that such sin is oftenest only the wrong 
 side of sorrow, that from surrounding cir- 
 cumstances are cast the shadows which 
 invest it with a horror of great darkness, or 
 cover it sadly with a merciful veil. 
 
 Henceforth, Adam faced companions such 
 as these with no repulsion in his heart, but 
 with a full sense of pity, such as he had 
 never known before. It was his first 
 sorrow thus to suppose himself ousted from 
 the life of his home, and he turned to share 
 it with those less fortunate ones with 
 whom — not without some sense of superi- 
 ority, such as is too often given to the happy 
 to feel for those less advantageously placed 
 — he had formerly played in the village. 
 He, Adam Daily, who had never known 
 VOL. I. 10
 
 146 THE DATLYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 actual want or sorrow, who had never been 
 beaten or crossed in his life, as the sons of 
 the Manor House had been browbeaten and 
 caned for a payment of eight hundred 
 guineas between them at school ; he, Adam, 
 had done now with all this. He had gone 
 over in spirit to join the despised ones of the 
 earth, had left the ranks of those who feel 
 themselves to be the deservedly happy, and 
 had somehow, from no fault of his OAvn, 
 become one of those less light of heart : those 
 conscious of infirmity or of blemish some- 
 where in their lot ; those who are not quite 
 as others are, who know themselves to be 
 somehow on the wrong side of life, and yet 
 whose innocence protests against the cross 
 they bear with their o^ti wills. 
 
 There was a boy in Slumsby witli a 
 crooked spine, a girl with purple, j^lum- 
 dyed patches on her face. Adam had stared 
 at these peculiarities often in days gone by, 
 with the hard, unshaded stare of ' blind,
 
 SUSAN DAILY'S VIEWS. 147 
 
 bright eyes.' When he met these maimed 
 ones next he turned uneasily away, with a 
 confused sense of new pains he could no 
 longer see and leave unshared. That 
 neither the crooked boy nor the plum-faced 
 girl attributed his averted looks to anything 
 but offensively assumed repugnance was a 
 perfectly natural result. They carried their 
 own burdens with the dull ease of use — he 
 lifted them suddenly with the addition of 
 his own ; and a nature sympathetic enough 
 to undertake such a task has already doubled 
 its pains. 
 
 Hearing his mother often express herself 
 as she had done only that very afternoon to 
 Mrs. Smith, when she had declared all her 
 boys and girls to be healthy and straight 
 and good-looking, Adam had hitherto taken 
 it for granted that they were something to 
 be rather proud of. He had never heard 
 the other side of the question as he heard 
 it the night before, when up fi^om the dark- 
 
 10—2
 
 148 THE DAILY S OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 ness below him his ears had been smitten 
 by the words in which his mother spoke of 
 the existence of ' those four,' and his father, 
 of his intention of sending him out from 
 the home. 
 
 It is strange how quickly the youthful 
 mind develops when first invaded by con- 
 sciousness of individual experience. All 
 the immature thoughts, all the embryo 
 feelings, all the unformulated impressions 
 and opinions that have been growing un- 
 consciously for years, when the breath of 
 life moves over the inchoate mass assume 
 shape, wake, and stir. Strange shapes they 
 take sometimes, unexpected and mistaken 
 forms, as did Adam's, grotesque and ill- 
 adapted for survival ; but the mammoth 
 and the plethiosaurus become extinct when 
 they have had their day, and give place to 
 a better order of evolvements. So was it 
 now with Adam's mind, which had hitherto 
 been growing and perfecting itself freely
 
 SUSAN DAILY'S VIEWS. 149 
 
 and unconsciously, as his body had done, 
 whilst engaged in healthy activities under 
 the broad sky of the Fens. 
 
 Mr. Daily allowed his wife to send the 
 younger children to school on week-days, 
 and the bigger boys were free to go on 
 Sundays if they chose. He cared but little 
 what w^as taught them, so long as they learnt 
 to write their names. This was the message 
 sent with every child of the family : 
 
 ' Please, sir, here's my penny. My name's 
 so-and-so ; and father says you're to learn 
 me to ^M:-ite it.' 
 
 If questioned as to this fancy. Daily 
 would answer shortl}' that ' A man who 
 couldn't put his name on to paper didn't 
 know Avho he was, and hadn't any self- 
 respect' 
 
 Adam, therefore, was not wholly unedu- 
 cated. He had had his few years at school 
 like the rest. He could read a little, a very 
 little, badly, and never for pleasure. He
 
 ,i5o THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 could scrawl liis name as his father desired. 
 He had been to church, and to school too, on 
 Sundays when he was younger ; but of late 
 years since his labour had grown more 
 effective in the cottage garden, which was 
 his pride, he had never thought about going. 
 He believed it to be the manuring pro- 
 perties of the water from the ditch which 
 reeked in front of his home that made his 
 flowers grow to the admiration of all be- 
 holders ; but, indeed, it was his own love 
 of them, the instinctive passion of his baby- 
 hood, the purposeful devotion of his boyish 
 days; but then those cla3's were so full of 
 work. 
 
 Adam worked in the fields and on the 
 Fens, as his mother had said, till he dragged 
 his limbs, stretched and tired in every 
 muscle, and fell asleep over his supper. 
 He had to turn out at five o'clock in the 
 morning, asleep still, to tumble into his 
 clothing somehow, to pick his dusty
 
 SUSAN DAILY'S VIEWS. 151 
 
 garments from the heap of his brothers' if 
 it was smnmer, to take them off the bed 
 if it was winter, where all night they had 
 lain to add to coverings too thin to keep 
 the life in anything but four warm-blooded 
 young animals such as himself and his three 
 brothers. In winter the four lay huddled 
 together for economy of heat ; in summer 
 they alternated heads and toes, for the sake 
 of space and air. 
 
 On Sundays, there being no enforced 
 labour to perform, Adam in his working 
 clothes would tear to the bottom of the 
 garden, possess himself of a shovel and a 
 spade, seize a rake to which Robert had 
 put a handle of which both were very 
 proud, and when all the people went by 
 smart and clean to church and chapel, there 
 would he stand, a hot and earth- stained 
 boy, digging, hoeing, weeding, all his 
 whole heart in his work ; with no false 
 sentiment of shame, since he had no sense
 
 152 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 of wrono'-doino; — no theatre of conscious- 
 ness whatever for his simple actions but 
 in the shining of some golden sunflower, 
 or the crimsoning glory of some autumn 
 dahlia. 
 
 Here was another point on which the 
 family fell into disgrace in the village, 
 for Adam's father and one or two of his 
 brothers often shared his Sunday labours 
 in the garden-ground. They had a very 
 fair- sized allotment for so small a cottage ; 
 land had been cheap when their dwelling 
 was built, but bricks were dear, so what 
 was lacking in indoor accommodation was 
 made up to them in garden-ground ; and 
 the poultry that they kept at the back, and 
 the ducks that paddled in the ditch in the 
 front, had more space to live in than 
 they. 
 
 Adam forsook his garden, however, and 
 put in an unaccustomed appearance at 
 school on the Sunday morning following
 
 SUSAN DAILY'S VIEWS. 153 
 
 his walk with Mrs. Smith. For a second 
 night he had found himself strangely wake- 
 ful, listening to the breathings of the others, 
 and to the snoring s of Xoah, who had got 
 upon his back for want of space in which 
 to turn. Poor parents — poor mother ! had 
 they borne the load of life for years, and 
 did he, Adam, feel as if those long hours 
 Avould never end. He had never known 
 before how long a night could be, he who 
 always slept as he lay down. He had 
 never seen the stars shine till now through 
 the broken panes of glass above his head. 
 He had never thought about any different 
 world before ; the limitations of this one 
 had been so absolutely unfelt by him. But 
 now that the pressure of its cold arms made 
 him shudder, he looked up through the 
 skylight with some thought of another 
 where the stars shone. 
 
 It was in school that Mrs. Smith had 
 invited him to meet her. To school there-
 
 154 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 fore Adam would go, and on Sunday, being 
 his only day of leisure. 
 
 ^ If what slie says to you strike you 
 aright, be guided by it ; if not, let it alone,' 
 was James Daily's comment on his son's new 
 line of conduct ; and Adam, equally practi- 
 cal, determined to go and judge for himself. 
 
 Unfortunately, he was allotted to a casual 
 teacher whose class was replenished by big 
 lads who came there no oftener than did 
 Adam himself. They were present to take 
 the measure of the new authorities, and not 
 to be behind in events that might turn up. 
 
 * Now, what boy can tell me the meaning 
 of " ori urinal sin " ? ' the sano;uine instructor 
 was asking, as Adam joined the circle. 
 None apparently: and an uneasy silence fell 
 upon the class. Then it was that Adam 
 stepped forward suddenly, and cried : 
 
 ' Here, sir !' his broad chest expanded, 
 his toil- stained hand stretched out to 
 bespeak attention, his foir hair curling
 
 SUSAN BAIL Y'S VIE IVS. 1 5 5 
 
 round his open features, and in his kind- 
 hng eyes the light of conscious mastery of 
 the subject and of his class-mates. Please, 
 sir, I know. It's being born Avhen you 
 ought not.' 
 
 ' AYell, not exactly,' said the discomfited 
 instructor. 
 
 The hght of knowledge died out of 
 Adam's eyes, and a look of puzzled doubt 
 took its place, Avhilst the teacher endea- 
 voured to convey the more orthodox view 
 of the subject. He had scarcely finished, 
 however, before the class was tlirown into 
 consternation by Adam's dropping the 
 book which had been j^laced in his hand and 
 turning to leave the room. 
 
 * What you have just said now can't be 
 the truth, sir, for it isn't sense ; and so if 
 you please I'll go home to my gardening. 
 I seem to feel better there.' 
 
 Adam had got half-way to the door 
 before the astonished young man had had
 
 156 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 time to reply, or rather before lie could 
 decide how to deal Avith such an unusual 
 crisis. The boy clearly could not be put 
 into the category of either commonly 
 naughty or stuj)id boys. There was ap- 
 parently no rudeness intended, and there 
 was no insult in his manner. In the tones 
 of his voice was no shade of untruthful- 
 ness, which could lead even the most pre- 
 judiced to suppose the lad was taking 
 offence in order to give it. He was 
 simply, perfectly, genuinely if mistakenly, 
 in earnest. 
 
 'But such ignorance, madam!' said the 
 young man, addressing Mrs. Smith, who 
 came up to [ascertain the cause of the com- 
 motion. ' Such utter, benighted, crass 
 ignorance! How account for it, in a 
 Christian country, in a Christian land ? 
 The boy is a mere heathen — a mere 
 heathen!' he exclaimed in disgust, as 
 Adam's retreating form made for the door.
 
 SUSAN DAILY'S VIEWS. 157 
 
 Then, as the lady did not immediately reply, 
 the young gentleman added, ' He positively 
 makes his own intelligence the measure of 
 truth; 
 
 ^ What then ? would you have him make 
 yours the measure ?' asked Mrs. Smith, not 
 without a quiet smile. 
 
 Instead of answering her, the irritated 
 young teacher turned to his class. 
 
 ' Boys,' he said, ' who is that lad ? Do 
 any of you know him ? I've never seen 
 him here before. 
 
 ' Please, sir, his name's Daily, and his 
 father's the tiler what lives down in the 
 last cottage before you get to ]\Ir. Smith's ; 
 and, please, sir, they're a bad lot is Daily's, 
 and you don't never catch 'em inside a 
 church ; and mother, she says his grand- 
 father was Tipsy Hoston the thatcher, 
 what drowned hisself when he was drunk, 
 in Diggory's Ditch, and the old parson 
 wouldn't let him lay in the churchyard.'
 
 158 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 These were the words which arrested 
 Adam's progress and rooted his feet for a 
 never-forgotten instant to the dusty boards ; 
 then bending his head suddenly as he had 
 never bowed it before, his whole face flooded 
 with shame, he blindly felt for the doorway. 
 The crowded room seemed to be filled with 
 eyes that mocked, and fingers that pointed 
 at him alone. 
 
 ' Adam ! Stay ! You came here to 
 learn ; and you must stay either to learn or 
 to teach.' The voice which overtook him 
 was that of a friend, as the poor lad felt — of 
 his only friend in a world that rejected him. 
 Obedient to her power over him, he waited 
 upon her lips. ' Boys !' she cried, ' listen 
 to me. This is my first Sunday among 
 you. I may have a lesson to give, but I 
 am certain also that I have a beautiful story 
 to learn ; for that I must have a Daily 
 beside me. Adam, come here. In Cut- 
 thorpe Church there is a stone to the blessed
 
 SUSAN DAILY'S VIEWS, 159 
 
 memory of a man named Daily, whose body 
 was bm'ied in the strong walls of the dyke 
 he had built to save his comitry. I want 
 to hear the history of that martyrdom. He 
 was your ancestor, Adam. You have been 
 born to a most honourable inheritance in 
 being the descendant of so noble a man/ 
 
 She paused, weighting her words with 
 the silence that fell upon the attentive room. 
 From the boy who had stigmatized the 
 Daily s as ^ a bad lot,' her eye passed 
 slowly till it rested upon Adam's coun- 
 tenance, seeking there for the dawn of 
 sympathetic intelligence. The boy's eyes 
 were luminous, but there was no such im- 
 mediate response as she had hoped. Per- 
 haps he could not speak for contending 
 emotions. She could not suspect herself of 
 any mistaken estimate of his feeling or 
 capacity. His was a character which in- 
 terested her deeply, from the first moment 
 of meeting with it ; not merely on the
 
 i6o THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 ground of distinctly elective affinities, but 
 also because the heroic element, manifestly 
 present in his nature, suggested possibilities 
 of moral inheritance. There were latent 
 enthusiasms in the boy's nature which might 
 be awakened in response to her own. The 
 seed of the prophet was in him. He Avas 
 nothing, perhaps, as yet ; but then in the 
 future he might become everything. 
 
 In that school she felt the presence of no 
 kindred mind but his ; she spoke to no 
 other ears. In her lieart was a passionate 
 eagerness to reach him, to kindle in his 
 soul the sacred flame which warmed her 
 own. When she arrested his footsteps that 
 morning upon the threshold of knowledge 
 and inspiration, the fuel was laid ready and 
 the moment of illumination had arrived ; 
 but the spark which, blown by her breath, 
 might in an instant have ascended upwards 
 in tongues of fire, had been well-nigh ex- 
 tinguished by the blundering efforts of
 
 SUSAN DAILY'S VIEWS. i6i 
 
 another. The smoke thickened, however, 
 before the flame mounted. 
 
 ' Diggory Daily!' stammered Adam. 
 ' What ! him as owned Sodden Fen, where 
 father 'ud be now if he had his rights !' 
 
 ' Eights, Adam ! Rights ! What a word 
 is that ! Whose rights was Diggory Daily 
 asserting when he died ? Whose rights cost 
 him his life ? Was it his own ? Answer 
 me that.' 
 
 There was no reply. Adam breathed 
 hard, and drew nearer. 
 
 ' Boys ! You older lads there, tell me 
 this : for whose rights did Diggory Daily 
 perish when his blood flowed over the 
 stones in the chancel of Cutthorpe Church ?' 
 
 Not a boy in the school but was listen- 
 ing now. All eyes were fixed upon her, 
 all ears waited upon her lips. They evi- 
 dently had not heard the story, these boys 
 who had been born and reared within a 
 stone's-throw of the place. Then she 
 
 VOL. I. 11
 
 1 62 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 pictured it for them in a few living words. 
 The fresh May morning; the sunlight stream- 
 ing in through the open doorway of the 
 church ; outside, the pale green leaflets of the 
 elms — the same elms, conceivably, under 
 wliich they themselves had often played ; the 
 j)eople crowding up the aisles ; the chinking 
 of the money as they paid their dues ; the 
 bailiffs and the sheriff's officers ; the clatter- 
 ing of the horses' hoofs, and the clashing of 
 the full-armed men. Then, lowering her 
 voice, she told the whole tale to the 
 end. 
 
 ' And now I want to know,' she said, 
 ^ what did Diggory Daily give up his life 
 for ? Did he die in defending his possession 
 of Sodden Fen ? He had already renounced 
 it. Did he die to save it for his son who 
 was even then ploughing those very acres 
 where some of you have often followed Mr. 
 Smith's cart-horses ? Beaten and bruised, 
 the son had already taken refuge in Slumsby
 
 SUSAN DAILY'S VIEWS. 163 
 
 Church here, close by, within a short 
 step of the place where, some eight genera- 
 tions later, Adam now stands. Did he die • 
 that his wife might have a comfortable 
 home in the mill that he had built ? It 
 was at that moment burning to the ground, 
 and his wife was homeless. Then, did he 
 die, do 3^ou suppose, in order that long- 
 years afterwards, when he was almost for- 
 gotten, Adam Daily, there, and Adam's 
 father should be grand and rich and power- 
 ful, should own all the lands between 
 Slumsby and Cutthorpe, and should yield 
 to none but the lord of the manor ? 
 
 ' I will tell you what he died for. He died 
 that every young lad and boy in this school 
 might be the richer, if not in public pro- 
 perty, to be enjoyed by all in the enjoyment 
 of each, at least in a grand and pure and 
 splendid example ; in the common posses- 
 sion of one noble predecessor, in the sj)ecial 
 possession, for one of you at least, of an 
 
 11—2
 
 i64 THE BAIL YS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 ancestor whose name it is an honour to 
 bear ; whose character it may be a God- 
 sent gift to have inherited. If you had 
 your " rights '^ to the utmost farthing s- 
 worth, Adam, in Sodden Fen, they could be 
 but common rights after all, shared with 
 every boy in this school ; in Diggory 
 Daily's death you have the special right to 
 venerate the memory and to dare to follow 
 in the footsteps of a Christ-like ancestor/ 
 
 There were tears in her own eyes as she 
 spoke, but when she turned to dismiss the 
 school, Adam was no longer there : he had 
 fled to the bottom of his own garden, 
 shaken with inward choking sobs. But 
 there in his place before her stood Mr. Smith, 
 nervous and pale. He had heard all, and 
 was cominsr forAvard to sfreet her.
 
 CHAPTER y. 
 
 LOVERS AND FRIENDS. 
 
 * Glen Combe, 
 Friday. 
 
 DEAR MR. APERS, 
 
 ' We were really such 
 great friends once, that now 
 that something very dreadful has happened 
 I do not feel as if there was anybody that I 
 could ask to do something quite disagree- 
 able for me but you : especially as you 
 were his oldest friend and were at college 
 with him, and so you will know better than 
 anybody else if it is true or not. Some-
 
 i66 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 body, whose name I promised not to 
 mention, has told me that Leopold used to 
 be very wild, and wasn't at all a nice young 
 man at college. 
 
 ' They've told me all sorts of things about 
 him, and I want you to write to me — by 
 return of post, please — and tell me if they're 
 true or not. If it is not quite right my 
 writing to you, I'm sure you'll be pleased to 
 get a letter from me all the same, because 
 there isn't anybody else that I could ask ; 
 and somehow Leopold really doesn't seem to 
 be quite as nice as he used to be when I 
 first knew liim. That is very awkward, too, 
 because the day is fixed for the 14th, and 
 the cake is finished, all but the ornaments, 
 and my dress is coming home next week. 
 Shouldn't you like to see me in it ? It 
 isn't quite white, because papa took such an 
 interest in having the right tone of colour 
 for my hair. The shade has been copied, 
 he tells me, under his own eye fi'om the
 
 LOVERS AND FRIENDS. 167 
 
 camicia of a Madonna he discovered in the 
 Piazza Montenara, whose hair has abso- 
 lutely the same lustre as mine. Papa can't 
 leave Rome, but he has sent ever such a 
 lovely piece of sculpture for dear mamma's 
 tomb, which he designed himself : he feels 
 that for him it will " convert Kensal Green 
 into a Campo Santo." He declares that it 
 has afforded him the highest consolation. 
 That, I am afraid, is more than I shall ever 
 do to him, or indeed to anybody else. It is 
 very funny, but it seems to me as if all my 
 life people began to get tired of me very 
 soon ; perhaps it is because I get tired of 
 them. Are you bored with Slumsby yet ? 
 Do you and Mrs. Apers Smith ever come to 
 an end of one another ? Do you know 
 what Leopold says about her ? Perhaps I 
 oughtn't to tell you, but, now I've begun, I 
 can't tear up all my letter, and I didn't 
 make him say it, so you must forgive me ; 
 but you needn't forgive him at all unless
 
 1 68 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 you like. He says slie's " a clever woman, 
 who tries to rivet a broken lieart mth 
 friendship, pliilanthropy, and general use- 
 fulness." 
 
 ' Isn't that a horrid idea ? That wouldn't 
 be like me one bit, I'm sure. If he or any- 
 body else were to break my heart, I should 
 die right oflP, I know, before my gold hair 
 had turned silver, and leave to papa the 
 purest consolation of designing me a monu- 
 ment. I wonder if yellow hair ever does 
 turn white. Should you like to see me so ? 
 I've cried tears enousfh to wash all the 
 colour out of mine these days ; and that, I 
 expect, is how it will be when we next 
 meet. 
 
 * Yours, 
 
 ' AUREA CaPELLA.' 
 
 This young lady, whose name was Aurea 
 Chapel, did but follow her father's example 
 in Italianizing her name. For the twenty
 
 LOVERS AND FRIENDS. 169 
 
 years of his daughter's existence, Mr. 
 Chapel, as the Signer Capella, had resided 
 in Italy. His wife came to England to die, 
 amongst her own relations. She brought 
 her daughter with her. Aurea found 
 admirers in her mother's home, re- 
 jected George, accepted Leopold ; but 
 neither deaths nor weddings moved Mr. 
 Chapel from his devotion to the vagaries 
 of a dilettantte artist's existence in Rome. 
 Aurea, on her side, declared herself sick of 
 miscellaneous society, bored with poly- 
 glottic flirtations, and resolute to be the 
 mistress of an established home. 
 
 That exact course of life which has been 
 rejected or renounced by its parents has a 
 special charm for the youthful mind at cer- 
 tain stages. 
 
 This was the letter which was put into 
 George Apers's hand on Sunday morning, 
 just as Jessie had gone down to the school. 
 Expectation that day in Slumsby was
 
 I70 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEX. 
 
 centred in himself; and lie could not find 
 opportunity to sit down and write to Aurea 
 in full response, until he had escaped from 
 other obligations b}^ legitimate perform- 
 ance. But he folded up the dainty paper 
 and laid it in his choicest pocket, whence it 
 stirred his pulses favourably to the delivery 
 of a very becoming sermon. 
 
 It was pleasant that her thoughts should 
 thus have turned towards him. This proof 
 of her confidence in his honour and his 
 truth was a sweeter testimony than he 
 could have dared to dream of. It was 
 characteristic of the sanguine nature of the 
 man, that he immediately picked these 
 plums of enjoyment out of the bitterness 
 with which the letter was leavened ; that 
 pleasure and not pain was the correspond- 
 ing moral sensation produced by contact 
 of his fingers during the day with the 
 ' highly-finished vellum-wove Baskerville 
 note.'
 
 LOVERS AND FRIENDS. 171 
 
 As a man of the world and a gentleman, 
 he was under the influence of that well-bred 
 sentiment of mutual protection between man 
 and man, which is the outcome of modern 
 ciAdlization. He would unhesitatingly have 
 classed amongst lapses into primitive in- 
 stinct any tendency to subordinate this 
 feeling to personal inclination. Aurea's 
 ' Leopold ' was in no sense George Apers's 
 chosen friend. On the contrary, the idea 
 of Leopold had become distinctly displeas- 
 ing to George since the day on which 
 Aurea's choice had been made. Nor had the 
 young men at college been the alUes that the 
 maiden imagined. A Londoner who has 
 never been to India fancies that the Smiths' 
 cousin in Peshawur must be rather glad of 
 the patronage of the Browns' uncle at 
 Madras. Miss Brown thinks that a school - 
 fiiend in Boston must enjoy the privilege of 
 taking tea with her sister-in-law in Colorado. 
 Upon the same principle Aurea Chapel be-
 
 172 THE DAILY S OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 lieved that George Apers at Trinity must 
 have clung to the society of Leopold 
 Stuckley at John's, because both happened 
 to have entered Cambridge at the same time, 
 and to have previously come from the same 
 Devonshire village. As a matter of fact, 
 both had ignored their former relations. 
 Leopold holding George to be at once 
 ' slow and stuck up ;' George dismissing 
 Leopold as belonging to a set the boisterous 
 music of whose words and ways was pitched 
 too loud for tolerance by fastidious ears. 
 But all this went for nothing now with 
 George. 
 
 As the wearer of an irreproachable black 
 coat, he possessed a sure guide to conduct 
 in the necessit}^ of acting up to his broad- 
 cloth, a necessity in which will be found 
 the most cogent argument in favour of 
 expensive clotliing. As a gentleman, 
 George Apers was thankful to be provided 
 with a moral code by society. This code
 
 LOVERS AND FRIENDS. 
 
 delivered him from the unpleasant necessity 
 of reopening questions settled for him, 
 once for all, by its agency. 
 
 Aurea was not lessened in his eyes by 
 the course which she had taken, as he more 
 than half suspected that she might have 
 been in his sister's. No doubt she had 
 pleasantly sinned against etiquette in in- 
 voking his interference between herself and 
 her lover ; and it would be his delicate 
 duty tenderly to hint as much to her ; but 
 then it must not be forgotten that this 
 charmino; maiden had wandered lono- in a 
 land where Mrs. Grundy, but lately intro- 
 duced by Mr. Cook, still spoke indistmctly 
 in a foreign tongue. Why, moreover, should 
 a man fall out with the inexperience which 
 attests his own superior wisdom ? The very 
 sweetness of relationships between the sexes 
 turns upon such feminine expressions of 
 fallibility made to masculine omniscience. 
 The woman who always does the right
 
 174 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN, 
 
 thing is the very driest bread of married 
 life. Many a man has been driven to her 
 who does the wrong one, through unspoken 
 fear of such diet. Such an uninteresting 
 morsel, whether as friend, fiancee, or wife, 
 it was perfectly certain that Aurea Chapel 
 never would prove. 
 
 One immediate difficulty faced George 
 Apers in dealing with A urea's letter, and 
 that difficulty might be summed up in one 
 Avord — Jessie. Jessie, as he had often said 
 to himself, had never done justice to Aurea : 
 ' his Aurea,' as he had called her — a lapse 
 for which he reproved himself with shame. 
 Neither had Aurea shown any understand- 
 ing' of his sister : a circumstance to be 
 accounted for, doubtless, by difference of 
 age and position. How could Aurea sym- 
 pathize in Jessie's sorrows ? Or Jessie in 
 Aurea' s joy, when it involved her own 
 brother's disappointment ? 
 
 The expression of emotion by sensitive
 
 LOVERS AND FRIENDS. 175 
 
 people may be ctieckecl as eiFectually in 
 writing, as in speaking, by an unsympathetic 
 or indifferent presence. George Apers did 
 not class his sister thus ; but he was well 
 aware that to taste the full enjoyment of 
 answering Aurea's letter, he must enjoy it 
 alone in his study after Jessie had gone to 
 her bed. As, however, he could not endure 
 for Aurea the few hours' doubt of his 
 reception of her missive which this arrange- 
 ment would entail, he sat down and wrote 
 her a few lines of warm thanks for her con- 
 fidence, of assurance that it was not mis- 
 placed, and should be requited without 
 loss of time. Then, not without an amused 
 recognition of the schoolboy in the Vicar, 
 he slipped out of the side-gate, intending to 
 carry the letter to the post-office himself, 
 before the beginning of the afternoon service 
 — was met, face to face, by his sister, in close 
 conversation with Mr. Smith, the church- 
 warden — hesitated, felt small all at once,
 
 176 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 and — turned back with the others to the 
 vestry. 
 
 Both the letters, his own and Aurea's, 
 remained in his pocket. Xeither gave him 
 anv satisfaction now. The afternoon sermon 
 was a poor performance. He felt himself to 
 he but a very sorry fellow, disappointing to 
 all expectations, and most of all to his own. 
 
 Yet, wherein lay the reason for all this 
 change in action and in feeling ? Not in 
 anv oblio'ation to consult his sister : he was 
 not weak enouoii to carrv the schoolbov 
 re\T.val so far. Am-ea's letter was confi- 
 dential, and could only be treated as 
 honourably secret. [Moreover, whilst court- 
 ing Jessie's judgment on matters parochial, 
 he never avowedly snbmitted his secular 
 conduct to her influence. He was not quite 
 man enough to dispense with the limitation 
 of 'woman's province.' AVhy, then, could 
 he not have held up his head, smiled at his 
 sister, complimented the churchwarden,
 
 LOVERS AND FRIENDS. 177 
 
 posted his letter, and felt at his ease as 
 before ? 
 
 The difficulty lay deej)er — had its 
 hidden root in unconfessed suspicion] of 
 the dictates of that social code which 
 formed the * gentleman.' The standard of 
 that code, when tried by Jessie's criticism, 
 was apt to fall, as she had often shown 
 him, something short of her ideal. Only 
 the afternoon before, when walking with 
 himself and Mr. Smith about the garden, 
 she had urged upon him, with a glowing 
 face, not to rest contented with well-bred 
 achievements, but to be a * gentleman ' and 
 something more, ' a man fired with divine 
 enthusiasm ' for the righting of whatever 
 wrongs happened to lie in his path. And 
 as a corollary thereto he proposed to tell 
 the girl, whom he undoubtedly loved, that 
 as a man it was his duty to leave her to 
 fate and her fortune with such a husband 
 as Leopold, because of the consequences to 
 
 VOL. I. 12
 
 178 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 himself as a gentleman whicli might ensue 
 from any outspoken answer to her touchingly 
 unconventional appeal. 
 
 ' But what could women know about 
 such matters ?' 
 
 That was the old question ever new : the 
 question of the past, with which Society, in 
 framing her code, had waived consideration 
 of feminine opinion ; the question of the 
 present, with which her timidity rejects its 
 ever-increasing expression : and this was 
 George's mental ejaculation now. 
 
 The woman who presumes to dig to the 
 roots of long-established social growths has 
 in irritated masculine eyes laid aside the 
 ' lady.' and, having so done, can with no 
 security be relied upon to understand the 
 ^ gentleman.' Jessie could not be depended 
 upon to accept the dicta of society; neither 
 was it at all certain that she would, having 
 investigated the present crisis for herself, 
 decide it as would any gentleman. Jessie,
 
 LOVERS AND FRIENDS. 179 
 
 therefore, must be kept in the dark, utterly 
 in the dark, as regarded Aurea's letter and 
 its consequences, near or remote to Leopold, 
 to Aurea, and to George. 
 
 George could not, indeed, endure the 
 thought that this guileless Aurea should be 
 left to his former acquaintance, who was all 
 that she had dreaded he might be ; but 
 then his duty as a gentleman forbade his 
 interference ; and he feared to face the 
 question which he well knew Jessie would 
 bring forward, whether any higher duty 
 might not possibly suggest his risking the 
 very disagreeable consequences of a different 
 decision. The result of mental conflict, 
 covertly declined rather than boldly faced, 
 was that just at the moment when George 
 Apers again sat down to write, having heard 
 the distant closing of Jessie's bedroom door, 
 disgust and weariness came over him. 
 
 The house was quiet enough now. There 
 lay Aurea's letter, but the words which had 
 
 12—2
 
 i8o THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 been symbols of life in the morning were 
 dead black ink -stains now. He opened and 
 re-read his own glowing reply. It was 
 nauseating. Self-disgust dyed the paper. 
 He tore it into shreds. Written expression 
 of sentiment when the feeling which gave it 
 freshness has changed, meets the writer 
 much as the seventh day's manna met the 
 Israelites. 
 
 But why write at all? The post had 
 gone hours ago. Why not let matters take 
 their own course, and settle themselves? 
 He was in no sense bound to interfere. So 
 argued his cowardice and his indolence at 
 once. Aurea would have suffered the pangs 
 of disappointment before a second post could 
 arrive. Was not absolute inaction the best 
 way out of the difficulty? Why commit 
 himself at all ? Silence, persisted in, settles 
 all questions, and may j)erhaps stifle the 
 conscience and save the judgment trouble, 
 although possibly at the expense of the
 
 LOVERS AND FRIENDS. i8i 
 
 heart. At any rate, he would not write that 
 day. He could send an answer whenever 
 he chose. Moreover, it sounded best in his 
 own ears, as a reply to imaginary social 
 judgments, to say: 'Miss Chapel appealed 
 to me; but under the very pecuHar circum- 
 stances of the case, I really did not feel 
 justified in offering any opinion.' 
 
 Having arrived at this strictly negative 
 conclusion, he turned down his lamp and 
 went out to smoke. 
 
 On the following morning George Apers 
 went with his sister to visit their new friend, 
 at Sodden Farm. The speedy alliance be- 
 tween the churchwarden and liis sister was 
 rather surprising to George. Mr. Smith was 
 seventy, Jessie was but twenty-eight; and her 
 husband was not supposed to have quitted 
 the world — he had merely betaken himself in- 
 definitely to an opposite hemisphere. There 
 was, therefore, nothing suggestive in their 
 relations ; yet there had been a concentra-
 
 i82 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 tion in the maimer of both as they met Mm 
 the previous afternoon, which had not 
 escaped even George's preoccupied senses. 
 
 The drawing-room parlour in Sodden 
 Farm was an old-fashioned middle-class 
 chamber, musty with six days' weekly dis- 
 use. The fender and fire-irons being of 
 steel, and the pride of the housekeeper's 
 heart, were cleaned twice a day, and an- 
 ointed with fat; it followed that fires must 
 rarely be lit. The curtains wore bags ; the 
 mirror wore gauze ; the carpet was covered 
 ■s^-ith linen. Yellow wax candles at ^\q 
 shillings a pound might be looked at, but 
 never ignited ; the stands which bravely 
 displayed them being of silver, and hand- 
 somely polished, were kept in an iron chest 
 under the best bed ; the chest was the pro- 
 perty of Slumsby Church, and the church - 
 plate enjoyed the same seclusion. All these 
 articles came forth very seldom; but, to- 
 gether with their master, were now duly
 
 LOVERS AND FRIENDS. 183 
 
 prepared for the reception of the new-comers. 
 So much ha\dng been said, the furniture 
 need not be mentioned ; the veriest tjro 
 among auctioneers would have ventured to 
 catalogue it at a guess. The 'usual articles' 
 were all present, as indeed they had been 
 for the last fifty years : the novelties were 
 conspicuously absent, saving and excepting 
 a yellow paper fly- catcher, which, renewed 
 every autumn, hung just above the centre 
 of the round rosewood table, where the Cupid 
 from Mr. and Mrs. Smith's wedding-cake 
 still disported himself beneath a glass 
 shade. 
 
 Mr. Apers being duly seated in the ' gen- 
 tleman's easy-chair,' his sister in the 'lady's 
 lounge,' with her feet on a Berlin-wool 
 parrot with beaded eyes, Mr. Smith opened 
 the subject most in his thoughts, with less 
 shyness than he had hitherto shown. ' Do 
 you think you were wise, madam, in turning 
 the attention of those lads in the school in
 
 1 84 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 the direction of the communistic tenure of 
 land in any form? You, and your brother 
 also, are no doubt aware that nothing can 
 be more difficult of proof than any disputed 
 claim to landed property, especially in these 
 districts, whether urged by individuals or by 
 communities/ 
 
 *In no part of England, I have been told,' 
 said George, ' has legal strife been carried to 
 such a pitch in days gone by. Suits and 
 counter- suits based upon Yermuy den's and 
 later contracts have, it is said, stuffed the 
 Fen Office, anciently existing in the city, 
 with undecipherable documents; and have 
 glutted the Court of Chancery with appeals.' 
 
 ' My own tenure and that of my father 
 before me,' said Mr. Smith, 'rests solely on 
 purchase. My father acquired the freehold of 
 the Sodden estate from the then lord of the 
 manor, Sir Digby Weyland, the father of the 
 present Lord, Sir Crowsby. We shall have 
 that gentleman down here before long, so I'm
 
 LOVERS AND FRIENDS. 185 
 
 told ; I believe lie's expected every day. He 
 lias got no wife, as you know, Mrs. Smith ; 
 more's tlie pity for the village. The old 
 house by Dripping Ferry doesn't suit his 
 mdowed sister, and she leaves us pretty 
 much to ourselves down here — except when 
 she wants to turn her boys out to grass, as 
 they say in these parts ; but I hear he's 
 coming alone this summer.' 
 
 ' I own to greater curiosity about the 
 history of Sodden Fen, Mr. Smith,' said 
 Jessie. ' Mere inquisitiveness I possess, I 
 assure you, sufficient resolution to condemn 
 to starvation ; but this curiosity I have legiti- 
 mate reasons for desiring to satisfy. Eeasons 
 not entirely known as yet to my brother or 
 to yourself.' 
 
 ' Oh, pray don't divulge them to me,' put 
 in George; ' in nine cases out of ten when a 
 lady offers you " reasons," Mr. Smith, you 
 may rest assured they are simply excuses. 
 Your experience of "housekeepers" has
 
 1 86 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 doubtless convinced you of that ; and in the 
 present instance my sister furnishes, I am 
 certain, no genuine exception to the rule. 
 She is as well aware as I am that she has 
 no business to put you through your paces 
 about the tenure of your lands, and yet she 
 does it.' Mr. Apers smiled pleasantly as he 
 spoke, and gave his hat an extra polish with 
 the sleeve of his coat. 
 
 Mr. Smith sat looking from the brother 
 to the sister, anxious to reconcile his duties 
 as a host with the judicial attitude which 
 this turn of the conversation seemed to im- 
 pose upon him. 
 
 ' A lady,' he said with humble gallantry, 
 ' is privileged to render no reasons, and 
 with regard to '' excuses," sir, as I dare say 
 vou've often considered, man made them 
 first, and not woman. Any information I 
 can give you, madam, I shall be proud to 
 furnish. My father copied a memorandum 
 in possession of the late lord at the time of
 
 LOVERS AND FRIENDS. 187 
 
 purchase, which it might interest you to 
 glance at. If you'll excuse me I'll fetch it. 
 I keep it with the church-plate for safety. 
 The memorandum was itself a copy of an 
 extract from the orio'inal aofreement be- 
 tween Diggory Daily and the " Commis- 
 sioners of Sewers," as they were called ; I 
 hope you'll excuse the title, madam.' 
 
 ' Pray don't apologize for history,' inter- 
 posed George ; ' a sewer was a sweet thing 
 enough, until we moderns defiled and 
 defamed it.' 
 
 ' Was it indeed ?' answered Mr. Smith 
 uneasily. 
 
 He knew a great deal more about water- 
 courses than the Yicar was ever likely to 
 know, but he feared that the conversation 
 was sinking to a level too low for a lady's 
 ears. What would his o^\t.i housekeeper 
 say if she happened to be lingering near 
 the half-opened door ? She never allowed 
 him so much as to allude to a drain in her
 
 1 88 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 presence. Her own precise position in the 
 social scale this worthy person indicated by 
 the ambiguous compound, * Parlour-house- 
 keeper.' As such she shared his meals in 
 the sitting-room of daily use, after serving 
 them up in the kitchen. 
 
 Under penalty of her immediate disap- 
 pearance, she never suffered him to forget 
 the gentleman in the farmer. A cat was 
 the only animal whose existence upon the 
 premises she consented to observe ; a rose 
 or a cabbage the only product of the land. 
 
 Mr. Smith had not been w^ithout anxiety 
 lest on the present occasion she should 
 think it her duty to receive his visitors in 
 the drawing-room. He was WTong. The 
 place she had chosen she knew" ; nor w^ould 
 she overstep her limit in one direction lest 
 he should ignore it in another. She drew 
 up the blinds, straightened the furniture, 
 gave a last look at the fire-irons, sighed, 
 and withdrew^
 
 LOVERS AND FRIENDS. 189 
 
 ' Mr. Smith/ said Jessie eagerly, ^ before 
 I attack this document, will you oblige me 
 by telling me one thing ? Do you yourself 
 really believe that Diggory Daily lived and 
 died in the way that tradition, and I might 
 also add history, asserts? Do you believe 
 that he intended to convey these lands by 
 a full bequest to the village, and that in 
 point of fact common rights were exercised 
 over them within the next twenty years ? 
 I do not ask you, mind, whether you can 
 prove it. That might be quite another 
 matter ; but legal proof, as no doubt you 
 will grant me, is not indispensable to effec- 
 tive belief Proof of faith in religious 
 matters is, for instance, daily given in 
 action which would not be forthcoming in 
 statement.' 
 
 ' Take care, Mr. Smith,' said George ; 
 ' there are claws beneath the cat's paws. 
 Observe, there are two questions in one : 
 one asked, the other unspoken. My sister
 
 I90 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 inquires, first : Do you believe certain facts 
 stated ? Your answer, as I take it, in face 
 of this manuscript, will most likely be 
 ^' Yes." What she does not ask you, but 
 what she means to get out of you, is this — 
 Do you acknowledge certain inferences 
 which she deduces therefrom, such as that 
 the glorious common people who are good 
 enough to be born in the cottages of 
 Slumsby village have a right to all your 
 lands r 
 
 ' That I do not act upon such a con- 
 viction is my answer,' said the church- 
 warden w^armly. * I can assure Mrs. Smith 
 that the popular cry about common rights 
 could with no shadow of reason be got up 
 here, and that the moral claims of the 
 people are as illusory as the legal claims 
 of Daily the tiler.' 
 
 ' The question of the alienation of Church 
 lands, now, presents to my mind,' said 
 George, ' a far stronger case. If I am to
 
 LOVERS AND FRIENDS. 
 
 grant my sister's position, that moral con- 
 viction under any given circumstances im- 
 poses upon me individually the duty of 
 corresponding action (which I am not pre- 
 pared to say that I do grant), how am I to 
 street the lord of the manor the next time 
 that he comes to Dripping Ferry?' 
 
 The saving clause in this sentence, it 
 must be remarked, was due to the memory 
 of last night's internal debate. As he made 
 it, his hand went into his pocket, where 
 his fingers played nervously with Aurea's 
 letter. 
 
 ' As no doubt you, Mr. Smith, are aware,' 
 he continued, 'Sir Crowsby Weyland holds 
 here no fewer than three thousand acres, as 
 to which no question has ever been raised 
 that they were the property of two rival 
 religious houses on the river. The Church 
 quarrelled over the nuts, and secular fingers 
 picked out the kernels. What do you 
 make of that, now, Jessie, with your furor
 
 192 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 for rio-htinQ: wrono^s ? Ouo^ht not the Church 
 in Slumsby, in the person of George Apers, 
 her Yicar, to prosecute a claim for those 
 lands r 
 
 ' Better base it at once, then, George, 
 upon the fact that you wear a strip of white 
 cambric tied about your throat for fourteen 
 hours a day, and that Sir Crowsby Weyland 
 only wears the same for four. That quali- 
 fication will probably represent, quite as 
 well as any other you may possess, the 
 intentions of the original donor. Between 
 you and Sir Crowsby, I'm inclined to 
 believe that that ancient testator would find 
 not a tie to choose.' 
 
 George Apers laughed. 
 
 ' There, you see, Mr. Smith — that's the 
 way she assails me. Better live under a 
 housekeeper, I assure you.' 
 
 Mr. Smith glanced uneasily at the door ; 
 but he dared not rise and shut it, knowing 
 that if he did so his tyrant would accuse
 
 LOVERS AND FRIENDS. 193 
 
 him of having seen her behind it ; knowing 
 also that he should be frightened into 
 denying that very indubitable fact. 
 
 ' Those acres,' continued Jessie with ani- 
 mation, ' we may safely affirm, were be- 
 queathed to the Church by some rich but 
 sinful old person, who, having sucked all 
 possible benefit out of them for his pam- 
 pered body, was determined to hold them 
 on for the possible good of his needier soul. 
 Or if we are to allow that he was a little 
 less sinful, or a trifle less selfish, why then 
 he had an eye to the poor — priests and 
 people alike — who would profit by the 
 shelter of those religious houses. If you 
 want to observe his intention, and to rob 
 no soul living here or elsewhere of its 
 rights, I should say urge upon Sir Crowsby 
 Weyland's conscience that he distribute 
 those lands for the common good, and let 
 the testator live in the gain of the poor. 
 Build reading-rooms, club-rooms, and baths; 
 
 VOL. I. 13
 
 194 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 make playgrounds, gardens, and so forth. 
 Build decent houses, so that thirteen persons 
 no longer sleep in two rooms. Perhaps 
 the first time that James Daily and his wife 
 don't lie five in a bed, they may bless the 
 memory of that early benefactor ; he wished 
 to be prayed for, and blessing is prayer. 
 Who knows but his soul may be eased when 
 they rest, and may be made glad in their 
 joy! But I do not fancy that the forecast 
 that you, as Vicar of Slumsby, two hundred 
 years later, would keep a footman instead 
 of a parlourmaid, would have smoothed 
 that ancient death-bed. The knowledge 
 that Sir Crowsby Weyland would keep an 
 extra hunter might not have been much 
 less consoling.' 
 
 ' A crusade acrainst a nobleman's con- 
 science. Yes ; that's ever the way with 
 your irresponsible moralists and critics,' 
 said George. ' Look out, Mr. Smith, we 
 now understand my sister's designs upon
 
 LOVERS AND FRIENDS. 195 
 
 yours. Take my advice, and give your 
 conscience into no man's keeping — not even 
 your Vicar's; how much less into his sister's ! 
 Depend upon it, a man whose conscience- 
 keeper is a woman, is the least dependable 
 of mortals.' 
 
 ' Yes, that is sadly true,' said Jessie; and 
 George was silenced by a fruitless search 
 after the motive which emphasized her 
 words. It never occurred to him that he 
 might find one wdiere she had not meant it 
 — in his own attitude towards her. 
 
 ' This paper, you will see,' said Mr. Smith, 
 employing the pause of conversation to la}- 
 the document before Jessie, ' explains how, 
 '• In pursuance of an order of His Ma- 
 jesty King Charles 11. 's general Session of 
 Sewers, a commission sat at Dripping Ferry 
 aforesaid, and did decree and ordain that 
 these fens should be taken in hand forth- 
 with; and to that end treated with some 
 foreign undertaker, whose demands being 
 
 13—2
 
 196 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 found very liigli, and all other neighbouring 
 gentlemen refusing, ' Dyggorie Dailie/ yeo- 
 man, a person emmently qualified, having a 
 fair estate in the county and a small pro- 
 portion of the surrounding marsh, out of a 
 noble desire to serve his country, declared 
 that he would be the undertaker thereof 
 himself, upon the terms that had been 
 proposed by the commission to those 
 foreigners." 
 
 ' If you will read on further, you will see 
 that this offer was immediately closed with, 
 and that under several headino^s folio wino* 
 the commissioners decreed : 
 
 ' " That all the grounds so drained should 
 for ever afterwards continue for meadows 
 and pastures ; that the said Dyggorie Dailie, 
 his heirs and assigns, should at their own 
 costs keep and repair all drains and sluices 
 which were to be made, and that in con- 
 sideration of this great work the said Dailie, 
 his heirs and assigns, should have and enjoy
 
 LOVERS AND FRIENDS. 197 
 
 800 acres of the said fens and marshes, to 
 be allotted to them out of the said Lord- 
 ship." 
 
 ^ But the gist of the whole matter lies in 
 the sentence which follows, wherein it is 
 decreed, " That if through the neglect of 
 the said Dyggorie Dailie, his heirs or as- 
 signs, the above-mentioned grounds should 
 be again surrounded and should so con- 
 tinue for the space of one whole year 
 together, upon transmission of a certificate 
 to that effect into Chancery the charter 
 should be made void ; those who in virtue 
 of having their adjacent lands improved by 
 Dailie's work paid fines to him, his heirs or 
 assigns, should be released from their obli- 
 gation, and it should be lawful for the 
 original owners of the 800 acres to enter 
 into them again." 
 
 ' There it all lies, you see, Mrs. Smith, in 
 a nutshell. Diggory Daily assigned the 
 land to the villagers of Slumsby, but such
 
 198 THE DAILY S OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 assignees not being recognised by the ad- 
 jacent landowners, the fines were not paid ; 
 the repairs therefore could not be main- 
 tained, and the deed of gift being thereby 
 rendered void, the property lapsed once 
 more to the Lordship. I don't say that 
 there were not intricacies of detail ; for 
 instance, the claim of the Daily family rests 
 upon the absurd assumption that the lapse 
 was not to the Lordship, but to Diggory 
 Daily himself, in the person of his im- 
 mediate descendants, as the original owner. 
 But taking it as it stands, it's a marvel- 
 lously clear case for the Fen-lands, and one 
 which in any case proves your villagers' 
 claims to have lawfully perished two 
 hundred years ago.' 
 
 ^ It would be the grander deed to revive 
 them,' said the inconsequent Jessie.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 A FEW FACTS. 
 
 URING the half-hour that he had 
 sat m Mr. Smith's parlour 
 George's demeanour had been all 
 that could be desired in the very cheerful 
 and agreeable Yicar ; but he excused himself 
 from making a third in the expedition to 
 visit the decoy suggested by Jessie. The 
 fact was that his thoughts would no longer 
 afford a trustworthy basis for suitable con- 
 versation. He turned off alone for a walk ; 
 and as chance, or rather as clerical instinct 
 would have it, his walk led him through
 
 20O THE BAIL YS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 the town of Cutthorpe, into the open door- 
 way of tlie parish church. A woman was 
 scrubbing the well-Avorn flagstones, grumb- 
 ling the while at the churchwardens, who 
 were ' only sixj^ence a week better than the 
 deacons at Zion Chapel, though the one 
 wouldn't have been boarded a year till 
 Michaelmas, and the other hadn't had a new 
 stone inside it since the days when Parlia- 
 ment was King.' 
 
 As a few words of further communication 
 established the fact that this very sixpence 
 was the p)rice of the scrubber's adhesion to 
 Episcopacy, George Apers felt no disposition 
 to dispute the fact that the bargain might 
 be a bad one. 
 
 'Ti'hy don't you make your son help 
 you — -that great lad I see lying there full- 
 length upon the chancel-floor ? It's a 
 disgi^ace to see a boy sleeping at such a 
 time and in such a place.' 
 
 ' He's none of mine, sir, and he isn't
 
 A FEW FACTS. 201 
 
 sleeping ; and if he ^vas, he wouldn't be the 
 first that's had a nap in church. He's 
 Daily's lad, Adam ; and he's been there the 
 best part of an hour. He hasn't troubled 
 me, and I haven't troubled him ; but some 
 one else has — his father, I'll "warrant. Xo 
 doubt but what he's come in here to have 
 it out by himself. He's a queer man is 
 Adam's father. They do say he mounts 
 the thatch, and sits astride the roof at 
 nights when he's burdened in his mind — 
 it's constitutional. I'm all for company 
 myself when I'm out o' sorts.' 
 
 ' Adam, get uj)! what's the matter?' said 
 George. 
 
 His footsteps approaching do^^Ti the aisle 
 had not caused any change in the attitude 
 of the recumbent figure. The boy lay with 
 his face pillowed upon his arms. When 
 spoken to thus, he suddenly rose, and 
 seemed inclined to go away without answer- 
 ing. His eyes were heavy, and a dark
 
 202 THE BAIL YS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 stain as of tears covered the last letters of 
 the inscription upon the flat tombstone 
 over which his head had hung. It was the 
 slab which commemorated his ancestor's 
 death. 
 
 ' It isn't sense,' Adam muttered, pointing 
 with the toe of his boot to the damp spot. 
 
 ' What isn't sense ? I don't know what 
 you mean, my lad.' 
 
 * The reading on the tombstone. No one 
 can make it out. Why do they write it so 
 as it can't be read ? I suppose because they 
 murdered him they was ashamed, and wrote 
 it so.' 
 
 ' But it can be read — it's Latin ; and as 
 for the letters, they're all right. Would 
 you like me to teach you the words ? Is 
 that what you want ? Listen, then : " Hie 
 expiravit pro populo mortuus." It means, 
 '' Here died one slain for the people." You 
 know who he was ? Your ancestor — it was 
 here that he fell.'
 
 A FEW FACTS. 203 
 
 ' Would you be so good as to Avrite tlie 
 words out ?' 
 
 George did so. The boy took the paper, 
 folded it in his hat, and left the church in 
 silence. 
 
 ' Where are you off to now ?' said George, 
 following him, and interested in spite of his 
 preoccupation of thought. 
 
 * To the Union, to see granny. She's 
 the one for knowing everything/ said Adani, 
 half turning round. 
 
 ' What sort of things do you want to 
 know, now? Let me see if I can't help 
 3^ou. It's my business to teach the people 
 here, and I'm glad to find that you're 
 anxious to learn.' 
 
 Adam looked hastily up, scanning the 
 speaker's face from the broad forehead to 
 the smooth unlined mouth, thence by way 
 of the irreproachable clothing down to the 
 well- cleaned boots. More than doubtfully 
 he answered :
 
 204 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 ' What sort of a day's work might a 
 rough-moulder's be ?' 
 
 ' Try the next question, my lad ; I know 
 nothing about that.' 
 
 But Adam seemed unable or unwillino^ to 
 accept the challenge. In silence he trudged 
 on to the Union, George Aj)ers following. 
 
 At the Workhouse-gates they met a 
 gentleman on horseback ; a goodly couple 
 they were to look at, both man and horse — 
 both equally well groomed and, it was easy 
 to hazard the guess, both conscious of 
 pedigree. The gentleman, who seemed to 
 have come there on business, was declining 
 to dismount and to entrust his horse to the 
 care of an imbecile-looking old porter who 
 was rubbing up the brass handle of the 
 gate-bell. 
 
 ' No, Jones, no ; I'm not coming in. 
 Tell the master, my lad, if you're going in, 
 that Sir Crowsby Weyland's waiting to 
 speak to him' — this to Adam. 'Is that
 
 A FEW FACTS. 205 
 
 you, Mr. Apers ? We've had the pleasure 
 of meeting before ; do you remember that 
 run on Exmoor ? Ah, I forget you were 
 not out with the hunt ; you confined your- 
 self to the meet. Pleasanter country that 
 than this. The late Yicar of Slumsby 
 having at length joined the majority, per- 
 mit me to tell you how we con^i^atulate 
 ourselves and him upon the change. Not 
 that I'm much here myself, except for the 
 shooting.' 
 
 ' The living of Slumsby has not given my 
 college much trouble,' observed George ; 
 ' the last appointment held good for fifty 
 years.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Sir Crowsby, ^ and was made 
 in my father's time, a dozen years before I 
 was born. It will be new life for our village 
 to have you and your sister at the Yicarage. 
 I'm ofi* to town to-morrow, to fetch my 
 widowed sister and her sons down here for 
 the boys' holiday ; but as soon as I return
 
 2o6 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 we hope to give ourselves the pleasure of 
 callmg on Miss Apers.' 
 
 'Mrs. Apers Smith/ corrected George. 
 
 'Your sister? ah, indeed ! I had not 
 heard. By the way, you'll find you're in 
 luck in your churchwarden here, Mr. Apers. 
 Mr. Smith's a staunch supporter of mine, of 
 an independent kind; and he's a thoroughly 
 good fellow, quite a superior order of man 
 for a farmer. A great contrast to his son, I 
 believe, who went to the bad a score of years 
 ago, and stayed there, luckily for everyone 
 concerned ; or he'd probably have brought 
 the old man to this' — pointing to the brick 
 building beside them. ' You're paying a 
 visit of inspection, are you ? let me intro- 
 duce you to the master, then. No, I'm not 
 coming in myself, thank you, master. To 
 speak the truth, ]\Ir. Apers, my imagination 
 prefers to deal with failure in the abstract 
 rather than in the concrete form, and clings 
 to success rather than to either.'
 
 A FEW FACTS. 207 
 
 • That's a good commercial statement/ 
 said George, smiling. 
 
 ' It would be if it were prospective ; but 
 when retrospective it's a sound Conservative 
 sentiment/ said Sir Crowsby, laughing, and 
 so they parted. 
 
 ' Ah, poor gentleman ! the last election 
 hit him hard,' observed the Workhouse 
 guardian, as he ushered Mr. Apers in. 'Mr. 
 Rout, the tile merchant, ran him close ; and 
 they do say he'll have to find a bride to pay 
 the bill. They say it's sobered him not a 
 little, and bent his mind on settling down. 
 But his widowed sister and her sons hang 
 on him shamefully. I've actually heard it 
 affirmed, sir, that but for him she might as 
 well be in here as many a one that is under 
 my care ; but you were saying you wished 
 to see the premises ?' 
 
 George Apers found himself standing 
 upon a well-kept plot of garden -ground, 
 flanked on two sides by tiny cottages, single-
 
 2o8 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 roomed, and sixteen in number. The main 
 building of tbe Workhouse stood on the 
 third side of this square. The master 
 hastened to explain that these select cottages 
 were built for the accommodation of old mar- 
 ried couples. 
 
 'What a charming arrangement!' said 
 George, with a sigh. The sigh meant, ' How 
 gladly would I end my days in such a cot 
 with A urea !' 
 
 A significant smile passed over the 
 master's keen features. 
 
 ' I've always felt,' continued the Yicar, 
 ' what a hardship it was to separate the poor 
 old husbands and wives ; for no earthly 
 reason condemning them, for no fault but 
 their poverty, to a divorce they have not 
 deserved, and add in o- one crownino- sorrow 
 to the sum of their misfortunes.' 
 
 An odd noise in his companion's throat 
 was the only answer George Apers re- 
 ceived.
 
 A FEW FACTS. 209 
 
 ' How many couples are there in those 
 houses now ?' 
 
 ' Well, sir, only two. You see, it's like 
 this — the}' aren't used to sitting together and 
 smiling at each other from morning till 
 night. The man, he's used to go out to his 
 work ; and the woman, she's used to cleaning 
 up the place and to minding the children, 
 to cooking a bit of dinner, to doing the 
 washino' and such, and to havino- a word 
 with her neighbours ; so when we put them 
 in those little places, two by two, like they 
 went in the ark, the w\ay they fell to quar- 
 relling w^as really past belief. We tried 
 them all by turns, and it wasn't a bit of 
 good. Take a look in, sir, and see how the 
 land lies. A bed and a table and two chairs, 
 you see, and that's all about it. Nothing to 
 cook, it's done in the house ; nothing to 
 wash, it's done in the laundry.' 
 
 ' Why not have it done in the cottages ^ 
 and give them something to do?' 
 
 VOL. I. 14
 
 2IO THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 ' Think of the extra expense, sir ; think 
 of the waste of food, and the giving out of 
 victuals and soap and what not, and the 
 consequent pilfering and plague. 'Tisn't the 
 fault of the Board. The men have been sent 
 out in the day-time on jobs, and turned in 
 the garden to weed; the wives have been 
 worked in the laundry or kitchen, or sent 
 up to nurse the babies and sick; but the 
 moment they got back into these neat little 
 places, the wrangling was not to be borne. 
 One after another they'd go before the Board, 
 beofofino: and entreatin^: for the love of 
 heaven to be put back into the common 
 rooms. We were forced to oblige them by 
 parting them again. There are some have 
 been tried five or six times, promising and 
 entreating always, and always the same in 
 the end.' 
 
 ^ But you said there were two houses 
 occupied.' 
 
 ' Yes, sir, there are two, and two only ;
 
 A FEW FACTS. 211 
 
 and in one of them the man's dying — has 
 been paralyzed ever since he came in — and 
 past fighting ; I can show him to you if 
 you please. Here's the cottage — that's him 
 — there he lies.' 
 
 ' With his wife nursing him, I see.' 
 
 ' ^N'o, sir ; not she. She's in the laundry 
 washing. She doesn't attend to his com- 
 forts half as well as the other women do. 
 She presumes on his being her husband, 
 and takes things too easy. As a rule you'd 
 find, sir, as we do, that the wrong wives 
 best nurse the wrong husbands by the 
 time they come to this.' 
 
 ' This is all very sad,' said George, in 
 surprise. 
 
 ^ Oh dear no, sir ; not at all. Nothing 
 in it whatever ; only common- sense, and 
 human nature when it hasn't had much of 
 a chance.' 
 
 ' Well ; but the other cottage — who is in 
 that ?' 
 
 14—2
 
 212 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 ^ An old couple, sir, that haven't lived 
 together for a quarter of a century, and so 
 they've come to one another again quite 
 fresh at over seventy years of age. For no 
 fault of hers he deserted her, and went off to 
 the colonies, and led a life of the free and 
 easy sort ; never wrote her a line, though the 
 poor thing was pining for his company ; 
 forced her to e'o back to service and earn 
 her own living, with two children to pay 
 for. The children grew up — she toiled from 
 morning till night, always bore the best of 
 characters — and afcer they were married and 
 could earn their own living she began to 
 lay by a little bit of money. Then he 
 comes home, gets scent of the savings, per- 
 suades her to take up with him again, and 
 finally brings her to ruin ; but as she's a 
 bit of a saint, there they sit. Good-evening, 
 Mrs. Twiss ; here's a gentleman come to 
 see you.' 
 
 Yes, there they sat, she on one side of
 
 A FEW FACTS. 213 
 
 the fireplace, placid and calm ; he on the 
 other, moody and cross. 
 
 What could these two have to say to one 
 another, as they sat face to face all the day 
 long — she with her good conscience, he 
 Avith his bad one ? Could he entertain her 
 mth stories of his past sins? Could she 
 touch his sympathies with the recital of her 
 earnest endeavours, which had ended in 
 this ? Why had they not their grand- 
 children about their knees — she, that she 
 might find comfort for the past : he, that 
 lie might learn hope for the future ? 
 
 ' It's nobody's fault but their ow^n,' said 
 the master, chiming in with George's 
 thoughts. 'As long as the lower orders 
 are free agents they will come to this.' 
 
 But George, as he looked at the picture, 
 gained a sudden insight into what life, 
 thus bared to the quick, might come to be. 
 Stripped of all trappings, empty of posses- 
 sions, exhausted of hopes, destitute of
 
 214 THE DAILY S OF SODDEN FEX. 
 
 duties. Something more than ' a bit of 
 a saint,' was his judgment upon her. 
 
 AVith no books, with no pleasures, with 
 no occupations ; too old to labour, and too 
 stupid to find intercot in thought. AVith- 
 out even a necessary wholesome anxiety as 
 to the recurrence of meals. Seated over 
 a fireplace with no kettle to boil, beside 
 a table without a jug uj)on it ; surrounded 
 by neighbours, with not a soul to drop in. 
 ' To stare at my wife's worn features from 
 morning till night, after I've known them 
 for forty years ! Good heavens ! I should 
 beat the woman mvself and tear everv rasr 
 of the bedding in 23ieces!' These were the 
 reflections with which George Apers fol- 
 lowed his conductor throuo-h the buildino^ 
 in search of fin-ther instruction. The ro- 
 mance about ending his days with Aurea 
 in a workhouse-room had already come to 
 this. 
 
 ' Now here is the nursery, Mr. Apers,'
 
 A FEW FACTS. 215 
 
 observed the master ; ' and if it was your 
 sister, Mrs. Apers Smith, I was showing 
 over, I should be forced to request her not 
 to notice the infants. The mothers have, 
 most of them, got no business to have 
 them ; and when Ladies come in here 
 setting them up by praising their babies, 
 it does a great deal of harm ; but as men, 
 you see, you and I, sir, know how to prize 
 a baby at its true figure.' 
 
 ' Have they been christened ?' said George, 
 asking the only question which could by 
 any possibility occur to his mind in con- 
 nection with infants. 
 
 The master did not receive this question 
 heartily. 
 
 'Oh dear no, sir!' he said; 'we've no 
 conveniences for christenings here.' 
 
 * Have you no chaplain ?' 
 
 ' Chaplain, sir ? Yes, sir ; but our 
 chaplain would know better. He's not one 
 to force his private feelings on a mixed
 
 2i6 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 body like the Board, or he would not be 
 where he is. Take a look in here, Mr. 
 Apers ; this is the old women's infirmary.' 
 
 ' It really isn't worth the gentleman's 
 while,' said a good-looking matron. ' Only 
 this afternoon we've been changing the 
 bedsteads, master ; and all their brains are 
 softening in there now. I've massed them 
 all together, to save the care of minding 
 them. Well, "Fits and Starts," and how 
 are you ? Do you want any sweeties ? Ask 
 this gentleman for some, then.' 
 
 So addressed, a poor old woman in the 
 bed nearest the door held up her mouth to 
 be kissed. She was one of a row of four- 
 teen occupants of similar couches, all more 
 or less victims of senile dementia, as the 
 rosy-faced matron had stated. 
 
 ' Oh, it's kisses this afternoon, is it — not 
 sweeties ?' said the matron, smiling ; ' well, 
 I'll give you one, then : but you ought to 
 know better than to trouble a gentleman.'
 
 A FEW FACTS. 217 
 
 Thus gratified, ' Fits and Starts ' sank 
 back a2:ain lauo'hino;. 
 
 'As long as I live ! as long as I live!' 
 cried another, in a shrill quaver from the 
 farther end of the room, whilst a bony arm 
 protruding from the bedclothes flourished a 
 broken piece of china in the air. 
 
 The matron turned quickly ; but more 
 quickl}^ still, with magpie-like cunning, the 
 treasure was hidden beneath the pillow. 
 
 ' What does it mean ?' inquired George. 
 
 ' AYell, they have tins in this ward for 
 their food; they aren't to be trusted with 
 china \ we should have six or eight basins 
 broken up daily. But " Eobbins," as we 
 call her, didn't take kindly to food from a 
 tin, and a lady that came here gave her a 
 basin. 'Twas contrary to orders, but you 
 mustn't see everything, and I winked at 
 Robbins's basin for two whole days together; 
 the third slie let it fall and smashed it, as I 
 could have foretohl that she would. She
 
 2i8 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 wasn't so far gone then in her head as you 
 see her now, for it's four months ago ; but 
 she took on most cruelly over that basin. 
 AVe were forced to let her keep the j)ieces 
 lying on her counterpane for a Avhole week 
 to come ; if they were missing, she'd disturb 
 the whole place with her cries. But her mind 
 seemed to get worse and worse with the shock, 
 from the very moment that she let the china 
 fall; bit by bit we got it from her in the 
 night, and she got like a cat that couldn't 
 count her kittens. One of the pieces had the 
 whole figure of a robin on it, with a scarlet 
 breast — it was the colour she held to the 
 most ; so we left her that bit for a com- 
 forter, and now she has forgotten the rest. 
 It's that she's got hiding under her pillow. 
 She don't show it me for fear I should take 
 it away, but she'll give you a peep on the 
 sly if you'll ask her. ^' As long as she 
 lives " she's going to cherish that fragment. 
 We call her " Eobbins " from it.'
 
 A FEW FACTS. 219 
 
 ' As long as I live,' the poor creature 
 repeated, half-showing, half-hiding her trea- 
 sure. 
 
 ' But that won't be long,' the matron 
 added, as they turned aAva}\ ' She's had a 
 hard life, and been the mother of fourteen 
 children. Her eldest daughter's a cook in a 
 nobleman's family, and comes here once a 
 quarter, in a black silk gown and velvet 
 jacket, just to take a look at her mother, 
 and bring her something she's got from her 
 place, which hasn't cost her one farthing, and 
 it's well if she hasn't purloined it. It's a 
 shame to see the respectable servants that 
 haven't a mite of responsibihty on their 
 consciences for the care of their worn-out 
 old parents. The better the wages and the 
 grander the place, the surer you may calcu- 
 late that the mother's in the "House." 
 There's a lady's-maid comes here once a 
 year, sir, to visit her mother, in bracelets 
 and satins, and brings her — one orange.
 
 THE BAIL YS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 And then, sir, she grumbles and argues 
 because her mother isn't better done by, by 
 us ; talks of a feather-bed and a bath, and 
 lectures us all as if we were her servants, 
 drawino^ our wao'es from lier for the care of 
 her mother. If I was an employer, I'd 
 never take an upper servant, sir, with 
 2)arents on the rates. In the first houses 
 in London, I know for a fact, there are but- 
 lers and housekeepers taking sixty pounds a 
 year bare wages, and endless extras besides, 
 with fathers and mothers in the country 
 unions all up and down the land. The 
 Board can't get at them, and the employers 
 would think it degrading or interfering to 
 recognise the butler's or the lady's-maid's 
 mother ; and so she dies, sir — like " Rob- 
 bins " there will die — and nobody's any the 
 Aviser till the lady's-maid comes crying into 
 her lady's room one morning, and begging 
 her to advance her something out of her 
 wages, because she happens to be rather
 
 A FEW FACTS. 221 
 
 hard- up at the moment, and has to go into 
 mourning for her poor dear old mother. After 
 which, having the kindest of hearts, the 
 lady gives her a five-pound note to console 
 her, and she comes out quite a picture in 
 black silk and bugles ; and it's well if the 
 parish doesn't bury the mother. Yes, I 
 know all about it, sir ; I've been in gentle- 
 men's service myself 
 
 Standinof in the midst of the lono; room, 
 betw^een the two rows of beds with their 
 imbecile occupants, humiliation was the 
 deepest feeling of George Apers's soul. He 
 could say nothing to them; he could do 
 nothing for them. The master said the 
 right thing, * This is the peacefulest place in 
 the whole House. They've all the attentions 
 they want, and no minds to make them 
 miserable.' And the matron evidently did 
 the right thing, with willing cheerfulness, 
 by every aged inmate there. But he — he 
 was merely an idle spectator, a not in-
 
 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 different moralist, a what you will — he 
 hardly knew himself, what. To be from 
 any cause whatever, whether from imma- 
 turity, imbecility or an alien tongue, un- 
 able to reach the intelligences of your 
 fellow-creatures, is always, to a man of 
 sensitive make, a deeply humiliating ex- 
 perience. It was a relief, therefore, to 
 George to descend to the old men's day- 
 room beneath. Here the master left him for 
 a time. 
 
 The old fellows were sitting all about on 
 benches. Here and there they had got the 
 loan of a book or a paper, not exactly new ; 
 but for the most part they seemed listless 
 and apathetic. Signs of animation, however, 
 s:reeted his entrance. One old man nudo^ed 
 another. ' Here comes the new parson ! Xow 
 then, Will, up you speak !' Will, a vener- 
 able-looking old pauper, came forward, 
 evidently as the recognised orator of the 
 room.
 
 A FEW FACTS. 223 
 
 ' Please, sir, removing the liberty, be you 
 pretty well to do?' 
 
 ' Well, yes, my man; I'm quite well, 
 thank you.' 
 
 ' Xo, sir, not in your health, but in your 
 circumstances we was meaning ?' 
 
 In his circumstances ! Here was a bold 
 suowstion at the outset. 
 
 ^ Xot rich enough, certainly, to take you 
 all out of the House, if that's what you 
 mean.' 
 
 ' Not at all, sir. Once more, accusing 
 the liberty, might we inquire, w^ould twenty 
 pound be a consideration to you now, sir ?' 
 
 ' Would twenty pounds be a considera- 
 tion ' to him ? What on earth did the old 
 fellow mean ? Were they going to give him 
 a purse in this Workhouse where they had 
 never seen him before? In his surprise he 
 hesitated for an answer. The question was 
 repeated with more insistance. 
 
 ' Would ^'ou break the commandments
 
 224 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 now, sir, for twenty pounds ? Would you 
 " oppress the poor, and him that hath no 
 helper," for a hot dinner? For a piece of 
 roast pork would you do unto your poorer 
 neighbour as you would not be done by? 
 Would you take his little ewe lamb; would 
 YOU rob him of his Sundav evenino^ out, and 
 all for twenty pound a year?' 
 
 ' Oh ! a grievance, I perceive,' said 
 George to himself ; ' fictitious probably ; 
 another candidate for the imbecile ward, 
 clearly.' 
 
 ' You wouldn't be the man as would do 
 all that?' 
 
 This was said very earnestly, and half a 
 score of anxious old faces waited around 
 for an answer. 
 
 ' N"ot if I knew it, certainly.' 
 
 * ^ot if he knowed it ; well, then, he's the 
 parson for us. Lookee here, sir. There's 
 thirty pound a year paid to this 'ere 
 chaplain here, for to do the service to we of
 
 A FEW FACTS. 225 
 
 a Sunday morning, and to read the Bible 
 when it's to be read, to shut up the bookcase 
 and to give out the tracts, and to bury them 
 as 'as a call that way; thirty pound a year ! 
 You may well say it's easy earned. But 
 this 'ere chaplain if he didn't go and strike 
 — struck against thirty pound a year, if 
 you can credit it ! So he goes before the 
 Board and speaks 'em easy. If they'd only 
 make it fifty pound a j^ear, he says, he's 
 kindly agreeable to giving 'em a extry 
 sermon, and to singing 'em two hymns of 
 a Sunday evening ; but if he can't get 
 fifty pound for doing of his duty here, he'll 
 go further, he says, trusting to his pro- 
 vidential luck. Well, the Board was 
 worked to that extent that some o' them 
 made very free with their languidge. For 
 sixteen Board days there wasn't no settle- 
 ment come to, by which time, none of their 
 advertisements drawing a new thirt}^- 
 pounder, they was forced to give in to their 
 VOL. I. 15
 
 226 THE DAILY S OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 man ; and just, of a Sunday evening, as we 
 poor old chaps was crawling out for a 
 mouthful of fresh air, to have a pipe maybe, 
 or to look up our families, if you'll believe 
 me, we was stoj)ped at the entry ; and now 
 we're everyone of us rung in for that there 
 chaplain's sarmon, and his hymns. And 
 he's put that twenty pound on to his table, 
 sir — lays it out on a hot joint o' Sunday 
 evenings, pudding and vegetables. And 
 what's become of our little bits of suppers, 
 or the mite of 'bacca, and such, our 
 daughters used to give us when we went 
 to visit 'em of a Sunday night? Eats and 
 cMnks it all, he do. Now, sir, we heard as 
 you'd come to Slumsby, and it's our wish 
 as you should apply to the Board, and do 
 us our duty of a Sunday morning for thirty 
 pound a year extry in your pocket; and 
 welcome you should be to do it too, and 
 Ave'd all join in the " Armens " if you'd not 
 lay claim to the job of an evening. The
 
 A FEIV FACTS. 227 
 
 Board 'ud be your debtor, and us old men 
 too; and we'd take your part against 'em 
 all. I Hope you credit what I'm saying, 
 sir, for it's all Gospel truth, as should be 
 spoke to a parson.' 
 
 ' It's nearly all a pack of lies, Williams ; 
 and I trust Mr. Apers believes nothing of 
 the sort,' said the master, who had just re- 
 entered. ' You all went out and got drunk 
 on Sunday night, you know you did; and it 
 was a scandalous nuisance and disgrace. And 
 the chaplain put another service on in your 
 best interests, let me tell you ; and it's very 
 presuming of you old people to offer your 
 opinions as to what took place between 
 him and the Board. That's no concern of 
 yours. You keep sober and mind your 
 own conduct, and you'll find work enough 
 to do.' 
 
 Was this question the supreme exception, 
 then, which could be truthfully stated in one 
 form ? George Apers doubted it still, Avhen, 
 
 15—2
 
 228 THE BAIL YS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 having closed the door upon the discomfited 
 grumblers, his companion remarked : 
 
 ^ That man, sir, was a cobbler that couldn't 
 stick to his last, but must perpetually be 
 going off to street-preaching and drinking. 
 He pawned the boots they gave him to patch, 
 got half a pint of gin with the coppers, and 
 then went round raving of hell-fire in a way 
 fit to make your hair stand on end. He 
 does just the same again now any Sunday 
 evening that we let him out, and his ac- 
 quaintances stand him a treat. N'aturally, 
 therefore, he hates sitting sober and listen- 
 ing to the chaplain's temperate discourse. 
 Now it's the turn of the old ladies, sir ; this 
 is their day-room. You'll find Grand- 
 mother Daily sitting in there, and I'll leave 
 3^ou to pay her your visit. She's a charac- 
 ter is Mrs. Daily.' 
 
 Another lono- room with windows on 
 one side, deal tables down the centre, deal 
 benches below them ; but on either side of
 
 A FEW FACTS. 229 
 
 the fireplace, where even in the month of 
 June a comfortable fire burned, two 
 cushioned armchairs. ' Old Sally' reigned 
 in one. She had been an occupant of that 
 room for thirty years ; the old w^oman who 
 queened it in the other was Grandmother 
 Daily, as was evident since her grandson 
 was standing by her side. Whatever the 
 answers might have been w^hich she had 
 given to the questions with which Adam 
 had assailed her, they had lifted a load from 
 the lad's mind, to judge from the brightened 
 expression of his face. He looked several 
 inches taller, and many steps nearer to man 
 hood than w^hen he had quitted the Vicar in 
 the courtyard. 
 
 Between grandmother and grandson there 
 was evidently a mutual understanding, be- 
 neficial to both ; easier to maintain, pro- 
 bably, than between Adam the son and the 
 simple house-mother in Slumsby. It was 
 to his grandmother that Adam's hopes
 
 230 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 naturally turned in his threatened dismissal 
 from home, and apprenticeship in the tile- 
 yard. It was to her that his griefs and 
 ambitions were hinted ; from her lips that 
 he sought confirmation of the lately learnt 
 histories of his forerunners Hoston and 
 Daily. Her brief statements steadied his 
 wavering convictions. Her blunt assertions 
 chased away his fears. How doubt his 
 parentage or suspect his destiny when this 
 old woman spoke so plainly and so forcibly, 
 with such a strength of hidden fire, with 
 such a wealth of unspent energy? George, 
 ignorant of the cause, yet noted the eff'ects 
 in the boy's altered demeanour, as his eye 
 glanced round the room. 
 
 It was a homely scene, but not without 
 its counterbalancing attractions, and the 
 visitor no longer wondered that its common 
 comfort was preferred to the monotony of 
 separate bHss. Rows of brown basins with 
 a deep chestnut-coloured liquid were stand-
 
 A FEW FACTS. 231 
 
 ins: to Avarm on the fender and on the hobs : 
 this was the tea, chief luxury of the old ladies' 
 room. Coarse Congou, contracted for at 
 eighteenpence a pound, boiled up with soda 
 and brown sugar, and served out in por- 
 tions. 
 
 ' Taste it, sir,' said Grandmother Daily; 
 and George did as she desired. 
 
 Hitherto, instinctively or purposely, he 
 had been adopting something of his sister's 
 position as the interested observer of life, 
 the earnest seeker after knowledge for 
 future usefulness, if it might be ; now^ the 
 thought occurred to him that the time 
 for action was certainly come. Circum- 
 stances were favourable to his assuming his 
 normal position of a teacher. N'o local 
 authority was present to criticize. These 
 intelligences before him must undoubtedly 
 be classed as inferior to his own. He was 
 an educated man and a clergyman ; they 
 were worn-out old peasant wives. There
 
 232 THE DAILY S OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 must be something in which he might suit- 
 ably instruct them. 
 
 ' You are all at work, I see, mending your 
 shoes.' 
 
 Grandmother Daily, as spokeswoman, 
 hastened to show that they were ' botching' 
 the ill-shapen list shoes worn by them 
 within doors. 'Mondays,' she added, 4s 
 shoe -shifting day. Each pair's worn in- 
 different week by week about. On Mondays 
 one set's given out, and last week's is called 
 in and mended. Nobody can't name a 
 single slipper their own. They say as 
 they're worn out the evenest so, and last 
 best.' 
 
 George began to wonder how he should 
 have relished this communistic possession 
 of shoe- soles, had every man's boots been 
 called in and redistributed weekly in col- 
 lege ; but wisely refraining, upon insufficient 
 data, from criticism, he merely suggested 
 reading to them whilst they sat at their work.
 
 A FEIV FACTS. 233 
 
 Thereupon ancient ' Sally ' rose up, de- 
 liberately turned her chair to the wall, and 
 sat with her bent back to the company. 
 
 ' She's a Papist — she don't face the Scrip- 
 tures,' explained Mrs. Daily ; 'but we've a 
 chaplain, sir, and he's paid to read the Bible 
 to us, and more than that. It's his work — 
 let him do it. It's a pity you should put 
 yourself about to help him while he's strong 
 and healthy. We was reading before you 
 came in. My grandson Adam has brought 
 us a paper. His father sent it to me ; but 
 Adam isn't much hand at the names.' 
 
 Somewhat unwillingly, George took the 
 paper, and ' old Sally ' turned round. He 
 found it to be a copy of Lloyd! s Weekly 
 News of the week before. It contained a 
 highly exciting account of the foundering 
 of a monster ship laden with emigrants. 
 But it was not the description of shipwreck 
 and storm that these old people wanted to 
 hear. Words of such magnitude bred no
 
 234 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 corresponding ideas in their minds ; rather 
 they dwarfed their own imaginations. No; 
 the names, the list of the lost — the Johns 
 and the Smiths and the Henrys, the com- 
 mon appellatives of common seamen — those, 
 and those alone, assumed shapes sufficiently 
 concrete for their intellects. A name was 
 a sign, the sign of a man — of such a man 
 as might have called any one of them 
 ' Mother ' — as might have gone ashore in 
 the ' Wash,' or sunk with his boat in the 
 Humber. 
 
 ' " Henry North, able-bodied seaman. 
 Richard Davis, stoker's assistant. 
 Samuel Sharpe, third engineer." ' 
 
 ^ Ah !' sighed each old woman, yielding 
 in her turn a tribute to the world of mean- 
 inof in the common sound. 
 
 ' " Alfred Smith, ordinary seaman. 
 Peter Price, cook's boy. 
 Henry Dally, steerage passenger." '
 
 A FEW FACTS. 235 
 
 ' My boy, my boy ! My own nepliy — my 
 born sister's son!' wailed Grandmother 
 Daily, on a sudden throwing the coarse 
 workhouse apron up over her head, and 
 rocking herself to and fro in despair. He 
 had sailed from Southampton, and this 
 must be he : and his mother ' a widow with 
 nine little orphans.' 
 
 Meanwhile, Adam stood silently by. He 
 had never seen his uncle, and could not 
 pretend to care. Why should he ? 
 
 With a view if it might be to console, 
 George Apers kindly inquired : 
 
 ' His name, then, was Henry ? ' 
 
 * Xo ; it was Dick, but it would never be 
 read on his tombstone.' 
 
 ' Was it then Dally, spelt with two /'s?' 
 
 Grandmother Daily knew nothing of 
 letters, written or printed. 
 
 ' Spelt how you pleased, it was Daily — 
 Daily, same as my own and my lad's — and 
 now he was gone to the bottom, poor dear !'
 
 236 THE BAIL YS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 ' Oil ! tlien your sister and you married 
 brothers — I see.' 
 
 * IN'ot we ; but it stood to sense and 
 reason that her husband 'ud be brother to 
 me. I shall soon have none left of my own.' 
 
 ' And was this " Dick Daily " on his way 
 to Austraha?' 
 
 ' To Australy? Xo ; he set sail for 
 Ameriky, and never 'ud get there no more!' 
 
 ' Well, then, if his name was neither 
 Dally nor Henry, and if Austraha wasn't 
 the place he took ship for,' George Apers 
 thought, ' he might confidently venture to 
 assure Mrs. Daily that this poor fellow was 
 not her nephew.' 
 
 ' Not her nephew ! Xot her own sister's 
 son, and him lying dead at the bottom of 
 the sea ! Who 'ud have the face to declare 
 such a thing, with the marriage-lines framed 
 and hung up in her poor sister's bedroom ?' 
 
 To his amazement, Mr. Apers discovered 
 that he had said and done quite the wrong
 
 A FEW FACTS. 237 
 
 tiling. In pouring cold water upon hot 
 feeling he had generated angry smoke. 
 Grandmother Daily cherished her griefs as 
 a sign of distinction. In the dreary level 
 of workhouse equahty he had sought to rob 
 her of her pre-eminence in sorrow; and 
 to be first in some form was manifestly to 
 Grandmother Daily the salt which digested 
 her parish bread. 
 
 Removing the canvas apron from her 
 head, the old woman rose to her feet. Her 
 fine black eyes flashed with indignation ; 
 tragic feeling lent dignity to her attitude, 
 whilst she stood with one hand restinof on 
 her grandson's shoulder, the other uplifted 
 in the air in angry denunciation. 
 
 As Deborah the prophetess of old might 
 have spoken, she spoke : 
 
 * Have we not even a claim to our sor- 
 rows, but the rich must come here and ex- 
 plain them away ? You've robbed 'us among 
 you of Sodden Fen — eight hundred good
 
 238 THE BAIL YS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 acres redeemed from the floods by our own 
 namesake and kinsman ; and here, when 
 I^m w\nihng over my dead, and these 
 poor souls are gathered about to feel with 
 me, you must step in to deny us our rights 
 even in our afflictions !' 
 
 ^ Say another word to insult the parson, 
 Grandmother Daily, and I'll chuck this 
 same shoe at your head!' said a rival of 
 equal warmth of character from the oppo- 
 site end of the room. ' I don't believe as 
 your nephy's a-feeding the fishes any more 
 than I am myself; and you ought to be 
 ashamed, after bringing up your son James 
 to be the talk of the parish, to be letting on 
 so before your grandson. I know my place, 
 I do ; and I'd have you to know yours, 
 which is what vou've foro-otten this lonsf 
 time.' 
 
 With these words, and with no further 
 ado, the jealous individual pitched both her 
 shoes at Mrs. Daily's head, and the scrim-
 
 A FEW FACTS. 239 
 
 mage immediately spread. Adam, how- 
 ever, came to the rescue. It had ah^eady 
 been his fate to receive upon his yellow 
 head a load of thatch intended for the 
 Vicar's ; now he once more, and this time 
 purposely, interposed his rough locks to 
 protect George Apers's well-brushed hair. 
 
 So James Daily's ' independence ' came 
 from this old mother, did it? &he must 
 have had enough of it and to spare, to 
 judge from appearances. Workhouse diet 
 hadn't starved it out of her. 
 
 * What more can I tell you ?' she an- 
 swered impatiently, in response to Adam's 
 well-meant endeavours to divert her thoughts 
 to himself. ' Haven't I answered you all the 
 history of the family — when and where your 
 father and mother was born and was married ; 
 when that silly body Hoston, your other 
 grandmother, was took, and the tale of her 
 ne'er-do-well partner ? If you want to be 
 off going into the tile -yard you must find
 
 240 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 the soft side of yer father, and I'd like to 
 see you do that.' 
 
 ^ You persuade him, granny. It'll break 
 my heart to go in the brick -yard and give 
 up the gardening.' 
 
 * Ask liim there ' — pointing at George, 
 who was busily endeavouring to restore 
 order — ' to take you as gardener, and then 
 send your father here straight off to me, 
 and I'll see what can be done ; but don't 
 you reckon on nothing. And you submit, 
 mind ; submit to yer father, and my best 
 blessing go with you. Sorry you should 
 have come in for a bit of a shindy, sir ' — 
 this to George, with the air of a queen — 
 ' but their manners does shp them so in 
 the House, living alone without any gentle- 
 folk.' 
 
 ' I'm afraid, sir, they've shown you their 
 sorriest behaviour,' said his former con- 
 ductor apologetically, as he saw Mr. Apers 
 to the outer gate. ' They're a strange lot of
 
 A FEW FACTS. 241 
 
 women in there, and strangers always 
 excite them/ 
 
 ' I should have much pleasure in looking 
 in again,' said George, * and in bringing 
 my sister with me. It would very much 
 interest her.' 
 
 The master looked doubtful, as he stood 
 with his hand on the gate. 
 
 ' Well, sir, if there was anyone in par- 
 ticular from your own parish that ]\Irs. 
 Smith stepped in to visit, no doubt there 
 might be no objection ; but as a general 
 rule, you'll excuse my observing that we're 
 forced to be very particular : with callers 
 especially. The Board, sir, is not very partial 
 to ladies. There's a prejudice against it on 
 that ground, as I'm very well aware. But 
 only those that have had the experience 
 can credit the consequences of admitting 
 the charitable public into the " House." 
 Kind-hearted ladies in all states of feeling, 
 with their bags stuffed with groceries and 
 
 VOL. I. IG
 
 242 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 their pockets full of tracts ; free-spoken 
 ministers of all denominations ; Avriters 
 and reformers, j)reachers and reporters, have 
 all taken us up. AYe're the fashion, Mr. 
 Apers — the height of the fashion, though 
 you mightn't believe it.' 
 
 ^ Times are changed, certainly/ said 
 George, ' since the days when Dickens 
 wrote " Oliver Twist ;" but you owe your 
 popularity to him none the less.' 
 
 At the mention of the well-worn name, 
 the master seemed stung with impatience. 
 
 ^ Ohver Twist, sir,' he said, ' had a 
 very great deal to answer for the day that 
 he asked for "more." It really is time, 
 sir,' he added, laughing, ' that Oliver Twist 
 was dead and buried. Historic he may be, 
 representative he is not any longer. I put 
 it to you now, Mr. Apers, as a gentleman of 
 common- sense and judgment : what do you 
 make of scented- soap brought into the 
 Workhouse in shilling cakes, because old
 
 A FEW FACTS. 243 
 
 Sally complained that the hard water cut 
 up her fingers and our stuff " poisoned the 
 cracks " ? What do you say to boxes of 
 night-lights for " Fits and Starts " to burn 
 us all in our beds ? What do you make, 
 sir, of tooth-brushes given the old ^women 
 all round, when they couldn't find a grinder 
 among them ; and a hair-brush, Mr. Apers, 
 of the electric sort, to scratch the skull of 
 a bareheaded old pauper that growled of 
 the headache ? What do you say, sir, to 
 pictures and china, to crosses and fur boots 
 and cushions, to lock-ups and boxes and 
 books, and what not ? One lady she dosed 
 them with globules ; another, she sent them 
 a kitten ; and as for flowers — enough twice 
 a week to cover a nobleman's tombstone! 
 If every one of those feeling souls would 
 but lend a hand to stem the rising tide of 
 pauperism instead of smoothing the life in 
 the Workhouse, they'd be doing a greater 
 service ; but then it would cost them more 
 
 16—2
 
 244 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 in personal trouble and outlay. Flowers, 
 and kittens, and hymns, and soap soothe 
 their sympathetic feelings, cost them next to 
 nothing in money and trouble, and us treble 
 their value in disputes and disorder. The 
 fact is this, sir : the unreasoning public 
 throws upon the Board, and us its officials, 
 the management of a great social problem, 
 at the lowest figure ; shrieks at any increase 
 in the rates, demands from us the thankless 
 task of making bricks — and ornamental 
 ones, too — without straw, exacts from us 
 the endless toil of practical management 
 and unpopular economy, and reserves to 
 itself the sweet and easy job of pouring out 
 the sentiment.' 
 
 ' From corrected sentiments, then, master, 
 we must trust that in time amended actions 
 may proceed. — Well, Adam, what do you 
 want now" ?' said Georo'e ; for the lad was still 
 at his heels, and appeared to be listening 
 attentively to the whole of this discourse.
 
 A FEW FACTS. 245 
 
 ' Please, sir, only to say that as soon as 
 ever I'm a man, I'll take my old granny out 
 of the House. I mean to keep her instead 
 of a wife.' 
 
 ' Easy renunciation of fifteen years,' 
 sighed the Yicar. 
 
 If Aurea s Leopold now would have come 
 to the same conclusion, George Apers's 
 path in life would have seemed very much 
 clearer.
 
 CHAPTER YII. 
 
 'athwart the glooming flats.' 
 
 [EXEATH tlie aspens wliich fringed 
 Diggory's Dyke, Mr. Smith and 
 Jessie strolled slowly towards 
 the hidden shelter of the decoy. The only 
 secluded greenery in the neighbourhood of 
 the level farmstead was to be found here. 
 The clear black water in the peat ditches 
 mirrored an unclouded sky, sedge- warblers 
 called to each other from the reedy by- 
 ways, strange frogs exchanged salutes as 
 hoarsely as in their native France ; the 
 sunshine of the long summer day rolled
 
 'ATHWART THE GLOOMING FLATS! 247 
 
 sliimmering clouds of light over the edge of 
 Sodden Fen, and through the rich grasses of 
 broad pasture-land the wind swept with a 
 stirring sound as of the wash of waves. 
 
 These wide-open spaces of the fen-lands 
 bring a sense of freedom and emancipation 
 all their own. The very nature of the 
 countr}', \fm^g as it does spread out at the 
 feet, invites to perpetual and easily realizable 
 progress. Yast ranges of the earth's surface 
 viewed from some mountain-top may in- 
 flate a man's bosom with the imagination of 
 oTeater achievements ; but the environment 
 of these still, calm spaces has an elevating 
 influence peculiarly its own. The manifold 
 intersections of the fens break no sense of 
 continuity; the eye ranges at mil from one 
 slightly undulating distance to another, and 
 midway between the extent of these almost 
 perfect horizons assigns to the human spirit 
 its place, neither on the mountain-tops nor 
 in the valleys beneath, but midway between
 
 248 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 two infinities, the one before, the other 
 behind. Even if his hut be as cramped as 
 was Daily's cottage, here a man may find 
 his world as wide as his brain can picture 
 it. The very monotony of the tranquil 
 scenery soothes his mind, confined else- 
 where in narrow or ill -adjusted surround- 
 ings. Hither come no jostling multitudes 
 with ao^itatinp; suo^s^estions of chancre. Here 
 comes no haste ; it has been left behind in 
 the city. Pity that, with the space to spare, 
 a man should not get outside class pre- 
 judice, and view it as a ring-fence, suitable 
 mostly for the lighting of fires. 
 
 So thought Jessie, eliminating, one by 
 one, the indefinite but alluring possibilities 
 which time and place suggested to her. 
 She had yet another set of more definite 
 possibilities to hint to her companion — 
 hints fraught with the power of widening 
 his future life, but she hesitated and awaited 
 a further opportunity.
 
 'ATHWART THE GLOOMING FLATS: 249 
 
 In the region of the decoy, willows, else- 
 where pollarded, had been left to grow at 
 will, and stretched graceful arms overhead, 
 beckoning" wavins; fino-ers as thouo'h in 
 triumph at their stunted neighbours' lesser 
 growth. Here and there the surrounding 
 fens were dotted with black peat-stacks, 
 darkening like funereal pyres the smiling 
 features of the land. Diggory's Dyke was 
 full of water-lilies. As they passed along, 
 thousands of snow-white and golden-yel- 
 low cups floated restfully upon its peace- 
 ful waters, indisputable owners of the 
 stream, let who would assert conflicting 
 human claims. With them only the dewy 
 arrow-head and azure myosotis strove, 
 separated by the blood- streaked intervention 
 of some crimsoning dock -leaf 
 
 In the distance, by the river's margin, 
 might be vaguely seen a dreamlike pro- 
 cession of six barges all in tow, bearing 
 loads of peat and planks down to the mills
 
 250 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 at Cutthorpe. Nearer, the discordant voices 
 of the bargees would have stung the ears as 
 they lashed the horses mto leapmg the 
 gates and gullies that came athwart their 
 course ; but where Jessie and her com- 
 panion stood, noise and effort Avere aUke 
 subdued to the quiet sequence of a waking 
 dream by the intervention of a mile or more 
 of ground. 
 
 Here and there, nearer at home, a mower, 
 Tvith a scarlet cap in shape and hue like a 
 begonia flower, swayed monotonously to 
 and fro, whilst he passed his scythe through 
 the ripe rye-grass down in the Fifty-acre. 
 On the knolls of rising ground the cattle 
 stood in groups, flicking their tails at flies ; 
 by the river's bank the horses gathered 
 in nervous knots, or w^aded in the stream. 
 And the highest point in all that level 
 landscape was the foolish outline of a 
 solitary calf, separated by some abnormal 
 folly from his clan, perched upon a barrow
 
 'ATHWART THE GLOOMING FLATS! 251 
 
 of earth wherein turnips were stored, and 
 bleating to the wind-driven arms of the con- 
 fronting mill for indications of the way he 
 should sfet back ao:ain. The mill itself flunof 
 lazy shafts, white squared with black, in 
 mockery of its prayers ; whilst the driving- 
 wheel, pieced in red and blue, spoke only 
 in the praises of industrious poverty which 
 had so harmoniously repaired it. 
 
 They had penetrated now into the leafy 
 avenues that led to the ensnaring-pool. 
 A willow that had split at the base, roots 
 in air, bathed its limbs in the stream ; its 
 pale grey leaflets, coral-tipped for lack of 
 earthy nourishment, splashed the water in 
 its course, parting it into dew-drops as 
 human fino-ers mio^ht have done. The tame 
 ducks dived and rose to the surface between 
 the broad smooth leaves of the Avater-lily ; 
 all round the rushes stood sentry, bowing 
 their feathery heads and clashing their long 
 brown spears for arms ; nearer to the margin
 
 252 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 water - ranunculus and blue forget-me-not 
 sprang at their feet; whilst gaudy eyed 
 insects and azure-wino^ed drao^onflies rose 
 from their kingdom in the luscious grasses. 
 
 ' It's a 23lace to be a dragonfly, or butter- 
 fly, or a moorhen in,' said Jessie ; ' but 
 hardly a tame man or woman.' 
 
 ' See it in November, then,' said Mr. 
 Smith, uninfected by her enthusiasm; 'its 
 beauty only comes of being undisturbed in 
 summer. At this time of year scarcely a 
 soul comes by. The wild birds will not 
 show till August, and then there will not 
 be ten where there used to be a hundred.' 
 
 Mr. Smith then embarked upon an old 
 man's account of a sport, the interest of 
 which had departed for himself years ago : 
 out of wliich, indeed, the spirit had fled on 
 the wings of the wild-fowl that came no 
 longer, as in da}'s he remembered, whirling 
 down upon the solitary pool. But he 
 found an absent-minded listener.
 
 'ATHWART THE GLOOMING FLATS: 253 
 
 Jessie, who had lent him her ears only, 
 and scarcely her attention, as they came 
 thither from the house, now barely re- 
 sponded at all to his conscientious descrip- 
 tion of the bygone duties of dogs, men, 
 and decoy-ducks ; of the former uses of side- 
 screens, nets, fences, and pipes or conduits. 
 
 Absorbed in her own train of thought, 
 Mrs. Smith was careful of interrupting the 
 tirade of the well-meaning showman; till 
 its end came, at length, with a heavy sigh 
 and an abrupt change of tone on the part of 
 the speaker. 
 
 ' This place,' he said, ' has sad associa- 
 tions for me, madam. I come here now 
 but very seldom, and never without a bitter 
 renewing of the memory of a certain occa- 
 sion, now twenty years ago, when I formerly 
 stood as I stand now by this pool.' He 
 struggled for self-possession, and then, 
 leaning upon one of the fences, continued : 
 * You told me just now^, Mrs. Smith, that
 
 254 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 it would be " a grand thing " to restore to 
 the people what you are pleased to call 
 " their rights " in Sodden Fen ; well, I 
 have only to answer you plainly, I have 
 waited indeed for an opportunity to do so, 
 that to give them such a right would cost 
 me personally almost infinitely little. The 
 only conceivable interest which for me 
 could survive my hold on these lands, lay 
 in the hope of my own son's inheritance. 
 In the apparent impossibility of hearing 
 tidings of him, there is no private person 
 whom it Avould interest me to name as my 
 successor. The man who has children 
 may possibly claim full credit for renuncia- 
 tion of family partialities in favour of 
 public spirit ; but the man who has none 
 makes but little personal sacrifice, if any, 
 when his will benefits strangers in kind at 
 the expense of strangers in kin. Take my 
 case, now : there lies that will of mine 
 waiting to be signed in my desk at home. I
 
 'ATHWART THE GLOOMING FLATS: 255 
 
 had intended to ask you and your brother to 
 act as my witnesses — I shall ask you still — • 
 but, as ever, something withheld me. Well, I 
 tell you plainly, madam, I've been utterly 
 di^dded in my mind between leaving the 
 Sodden estate to her Majesty the Queen, 
 or to Cutthorpe Union, to build a new in- 
 firmary. 
 
 ' Ah ! you may smile ; but there's a 
 good deal to be said in favour of either 
 arrangement. As a guardian, Tve learnt 
 what a ti2:ht fit it is with the rates in these 
 parts. You can't let them out a bit witli- 
 out bringing so many more labouring 
 families on them, that you'll be forced to 
 repeat the operation in a twelvemonth's 
 time ; yet the accommodation in the Union 
 infirmary for the sick and aged is far from 
 being what it ought, and there's room for a 
 benefactor to step in and give them a help- 
 ing hand. On the other side, there's a 
 great deal to be said in favour of leaving
 
 2 56 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 my lands to the Crown. Her Majesty's a 
 good Queen, and a good woman, and she 
 is blessed with a large family of sons and 
 daughters. You may be sure that any 
 property you left her would be advan- 
 tageously disposed of, or properly main- 
 tained. I've always been one of her most 
 loyal subjects, and there would be a kind of 
 satisfaction to my mind in feeling that I'd 
 done my best to serve the State after I was 
 dead, as well as I had done the Church 
 while I was alive. But the lawyers, either 
 way, find difficulties. Therefore, you see 
 that as long as my son does not return, 
 and so long as neither wife nor child comes 
 to claim in right of my son, I'm open to 
 conversion by you. Probably you might 
 find me an easy convert ; and I should take 
 small credit to myself if I played the bene- 
 factor to Slumsby to-morrow by a gift of 
 the title-deeds of Sodden Fen. When my 
 son left me I disinherited him, and told him
 
 'ATHWART THE GLOOMING FLATS: 257 
 
 so; years ago now I re-instated him in 
 rights he has never come to claim.' 
 
 Jessie's attention was absorbmo^ enouo'h 
 now. Earnestly drinking in every word 
 that the old man spoke, she stood facing 
 him, both hands clas^^ed upon the railing of 
 the fence over which he also was leaning. 
 Singularl}^ free from self-consciousness was 
 her attitude ; the tension of the fingers only 
 proving how intense was her interest in fol- 
 lowing liim. 
 
 ' May all your wishes in life, my dear 
 lady, be as well within range of realization,' 
 said Mr. Smith, endeavouring to fill a pause 
 of sound with one of his old-fashioned eiforts 
 of politeness. 
 
 ^ Ah ! dear Mr. Smith,' said she, ' ideals 
 converted into realities become subject to 
 quite a new set of laws in the change, which 
 not unfrequeiitly results in the mere substi- 
 tution of the impossible for tlie improbable. 
 The child never realizes the unattainability 
 
 VOL. I. 17
 
 258 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 of tlie rainbow until the sun -streaked di^ops 
 of water fall upon liim. But may I ask, 
 how have the lawyers settled the question 
 about this difficult document of yours ?' 
 
 ' The draft, madam, is drawn up in favour 
 of my son, my Henry. There you see his 
 initials, " H.S.," cut everywhere uj)on this 
 fence. Henry Smith, same name as your 
 own ; but I'm not aware if similarly spelt.' 
 
 * It is too common to be a name,' said 
 Jessie. 
 
 ^ Just so; or in the event of his not re- 
 turning within a given time, or of his death 
 being legally proved, to his wife, if such 
 should come forward, again with conclusive 
 j)roof ; or to any child he might have left 
 behind him. To son, Avife, or child the 
 property goes in the will that I'm anxious 
 to obtain your immediate assistance in sign- 
 ing. Any further arrangement must be 
 added by codicil. Perhaps on your next 
 visit you will oblige me? I'm a lonely old
 
 'ATHWART THE GLOOMING FLATS: 259 
 
 man; and even for such a favour must 
 depend upon the courtesy of strangers, un- 
 less prepared to disregard the curiosity of 
 inferiors.' 
 
 'Ask my brother by all means, Mr. 
 Smith; but I must beg you to excuse me. 
 I am not a widow, and from circumstances 
 connected with my marriage I consider 
 m}'self disqualified from rendering you this 
 triflinsr service. Find me some other.' 
 
 '^ Pardon me, I had thought you were 
 widowed.' 
 
 ' You have spoken to me of your great 
 loss, Mr. Smith, in your son, and I too 
 will speak to you of mine. I am not a 
 widow, but I am that far sadder thing — a 
 mfe undeservedly deserted.' 
 
 Mr. Smith bowed his head in a tribute of 
 silent respect. 
 
 ' Mr. Smith,' she continued, with deep 
 feeling, ' in looking at those widows who 
 are widows indeed, I have often been tempted 
 
 17—2
 
 26o THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 to say that some women's worst misery is 
 better than others' best happiness, and to 
 envy their sorrows has to me been a greater 
 temptation than to covet their joys.' Then, 
 pressing both her hands on his arm, she 
 pleaded, with long-hidden emotion : ' Mr. 
 Smith, let me speak, I entreat you. It is so 
 horrible to live always stifling the cry of 
 one's own heart, with a smile vi^on one's 
 face and light words on one's lips ! I am 
 alone ! I am forsaken by the only man on 
 earth I ever cared for. I tell you, Mr. 
 Smith, standing here beneath these broad 
 silent heavens, I'd be thankful — thankful 
 even to have him in the grave, for the right 
 to weep openly tears which the sympathy 
 of others might respect and allow. But now 
 the grave is in my own heart only. My 
 life is a dance over a thinly frozen sea of 
 death ; if I pause, I am submerged ; I rise 
 to the surface only to recommence my en- 
 forced activity. I rest at my peril. Some
 
 'ATHWART THE GLOOMING FLATS: 261 
 
 day I shall go to the bottom for the last time. 
 The thought comes to me like a dream of rest/ 
 
 The old man found no answer for a 
 moment. Perhaps she had chosen him as a 
 confidant, divining his incapacity for criti- 
 cism ; mere absence of critical faculty being 
 in itself a great recommendation where ful- 
 ness of sympathy cannot be looked for. Her 
 head was bowed down over her clasped 
 fingers, and he laid his hand gently upon 
 her shoulder. 
 
 ^ I am not speaking on impulse,' she said, 
 lifting her head shortly, and looking at him 
 steadily, with eyes which had shed no tears. 
 ^ It is not the least likely that I, who am so 
 well accustomed to perpetual self-restraint, 
 should ever relax my rule except upon suf- 
 ficient grounds, and upon intention more or 
 less deliberate. I meant to speak to you. I 
 knew that I should do it ever since I saw you 
 first. It may astonish you that I should 
 have been so precipitate: but I will explain
 
 262 THE DAIL YS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 it all some day soon. If it seems strange to 
 you now, it T^ill not be so for long. I 
 brought you here to this quiet place on pur- 
 pose that we might speak together undis- 
 turbed, that you might tell me of your lost 
 son, and that I might tell you of my lost 
 husband. Here we have no hsteners, and 
 healing, and hope, and forgiveness seem pos- 
 sible under these still, broad skies; rest, 
 even, if here one might lie down and die.' 
 
 ^ My dear,' he said — ' forgive me if I call 
 you so, for you are young enough to be at 
 least my daughter.' 
 
 ' Yes, call me so,' she said. 
 
 ' My dear, I do not like to hear so young 
 a woman talk of death with dry eyes. It 
 is well enough for an old man like myself ; 
 my hopes are all behind me : but in youth 
 hope dies hard, and to you must still be 
 possible. Believe me, I can understand you 
 in what you just now said. In looking at 
 those men who are fathers still — with sons
 
 'ATHWART THE GLOOMING FLATS: 263 
 
 dead in the sight of others in this world, 
 but ahve to them in another — -I too have 
 realized that their deepest sorrow was in- 
 deed joy to mine ; for my son, alive to 
 others, is dead only to me ! On this very 
 spot, where you and I now stand, twenty 
 years ago he and I stood together for the 
 last time. From that very fence he aimed his 
 gun at his father's head. It was the result 
 of an angry scene, in which he, half drunk, 
 had espoused the cause of a poacher, perse- 
 cuted, as he in his boyish passion held, by 
 me. His "friends," as he called them, 
 might always be found in the outcasts, the 
 lawless, the poacher — the very tramp on 
 the highway. His early habit of drinking 
 was acquired, I am certain, from no thirst 
 for the stuff, but from a sheer craving for 
 fellowship with every base chap that he 
 held to be somehow kej)t on the wrong side 
 of the wall. 
 
 ' " Noble," do you call it ? No doubt
 
 264 THE BAIL YS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 there was gold in the lump ; but such a 
 perversion of judgment — such a confusion of 
 duties ! Had I no claims on his confidence, 
 his father — his sole surviving parent and 
 guardian? He always sided against me in 
 any question of class; and any ne'er-do-well 
 on the farm had my son's ear sooner than 
 I. My voice, my commands, my entreaties 
 only drove liim the quicker into the arms of 
 those whom every right-thinking mind must 
 despise. The marvel is, where did he learn 
 it ? It seemed bred in the bone : and vet 
 he came of an honest and upright set of 
 progenitors on his dear mother's side and 
 on mine. The result was what might have 
 been looked for : in return for his partizan- 
 ship, these scoundrels taught him their 
 \dces — or one of their vices, I ought to have 
 said — for I never had reason to think him 
 depraved. He drank in their company : 
 that was enough. But indeed I was to 
 blame — I was to blame, too. He was not
 
 'ATHWART THE GLOOMING FLATS : 265 
 
 himself. He was not sober ; and he was 
 only a lad — a wild lad of sixteen years — as 
 untrained and as unbroken as a year-old 
 colt. I cast him off after that, and told 
 him that never during my lifetime, nor 
 after my death, need he hope for a farthing 
 from me, however poor he might chance to 
 become, nor for any token of recognition. 
 And now it seems to me that when I creep 
 up to heaven's gate — as maybe I shall 
 shortly creep, for I've been gettmg feebler 
 of late — the great Father up there will ask 
 me what I have done with my son, and He 
 Avill cast me off also in my turn. Believe 
 me, my dear, to have been forsaken is as 
 nothing compared with the agony, the re- 
 morse of having yourself cast off — flung 
 away in a moment of personal anger — the 
 body and soul maybe of another ; and that 
 other, one dearer to you than your own 
 life! Believe me, for dead hopes gentle 
 sepulture may still be found ; but for
 
 266 THE BAIL YS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 living remorse there is no grave in this 
 world, nor, as it often seems to me, may 
 one be found in any other.' 
 
 What a change had come over these two 
 in externals ! He — the humble, stooping, 
 diffident man — stood upright now, robed in 
 the dignity wherewith long experience of life 
 and sorrow invests the aged when they have 
 the power to claim it. She — the. vivacious, 
 outwardly cheerful, and slightly opinion- 
 ative woman — appeared in her true charac- 
 ter, quiet and confiding as a tired child; 
 the self-assertion of which she was sometimes 
 accused by ordinary observers being but the 
 veil with which she hid the real dependence 
 of a womanly nature, thrust back upon itself 
 for support. 
 
 Mr. Smith now turned towards their 
 homeward path, and she clung to the old 
 man's arm, suiting her ordinarily quick 
 step to his deliberate paces. In his simjDle 
 words she recoofnised the outcome of a
 
 'ATHWART THE GLOOMING FLATS: 267 
 
 wisdom purchased with his heart's anguish, 
 and not by any effort of brain. He was 
 not clever, nor learned, nor acute ; he knew 
 few things, had seen few men and fewer 
 women, and no other country: but the 
 things which were his he had plucked from 
 his own thorny experience with bleeding 
 hands — he had given his life to their learn- 
 ing ; and the effort that it cost him to share 
 his grief with her was visible in the agita- 
 tion which momentarily shook his spare 
 frame, as the wind bows the poplars and 
 passes by. In the worn features of his face, 
 the history of his suffering was written 
 legibly enough henceforth for Jessie — lend- 
 ing dignity, and refinement, and interest to 
 what otherwise might have seemed homely 
 and plain. 
 
 ' Will you not tell me more of your son ?' 
 she said gently. ' Did you never get any 
 further tidings of him ?' 
 
 ' I will answer you quite plainly, Mrs.
 
 268 THE BAIL YS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 Smith. Just at first I felt he was well lost. 
 I was very angry; and until my passion 
 cooled, I took no notice of his absence. 
 Age has cooled it now ; but I was a hot- 
 tempered man in my younger days.' 
 
 ' It is hard to believe that you were so, 
 my dear old friend,' she said, pressing liis 
 arm. ' Well, go on, please, with your 
 story.' 
 
 * When I did begin to make mquiries 
 and to advertise, no answers came; and 
 somehow, I could not bear circulating my 
 loss at all freely. It seemed an impossible 
 thing to me, brought up all my life on this 
 country farm, to go out into the world 
 with my sorrow and let every careless out- 
 sider into the most hidden secrets of my 
 soul. Anyway, the months and years rolled 
 by. Presently, I told my story ; but no 
 answerinof messao^e ever came.' 
 
 ' Then what made you think of a wife or 
 a child ? AYas it mere supposition, or have
 
 ATHWART THE GLOOMING FLATS: 269 
 
 you some notion of such a possibility ? 
 Have you made this will, that you tell me 
 of, at a venture T 
 
 ' Xot quite. Some few years back a hint 
 was brought to me, not only that my son 
 was alive, but that he had a wife and child, 
 — that he had deserted them and gone to 
 Australia. Since that day I have looked 
 in the face of every beggar wife and child, 
 of every passing tramp that comes this 
 way ; I have given them food, and help, 
 and shelter. Xone has ever been refused, 
 lest in turning away any from my gate I 
 might once more be rejecting my own flesh 
 and blood ; but they have never come — they 
 have never come ; and now I begin to fear 
 they will be too late for me.' 
 
 *But why seek for them only amongst 
 such people as beggars and tramps ? Have 
 you a reason ?' 
 
 ' I have. Those evil combinations, the 
 Trades Unions, some years ago sent a dele-
 
 270 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 gate here ; and an enterprising friend of 
 mine, urged by a curiosity that I must 
 confess I cannot understand, subsequently 
 went north to judge for himself by attend- 
 ing one of their meetings. There, upon 
 the platform, making the most violent 
 speech of the night, was a man whom he 
 told me instantly recalled to his recollec- 
 tion my misguided son Henry. This 
 speaker he described to me as a handsome, 
 bold, gentlemanly fellow, well-built, de- 
 veloped of course out of his certainty, but 
 immediately exciting his interest from some 
 curious resemblance to the impetuous lad 
 with whom he had often carried a gun over 
 these familiar footways in bygone years. By 
 admission, the speaker was a farmer's son, 
 and had at one time of his life been a bailiff 
 on a gentleman's estate. He professed to 
 tell the labourers listening to him, things 
 which he knew and had observed through 
 his own opportunities ; and he lashed his
 
 'ATHWART THE GLOOMING FLATS.' 271 
 
 hearers uj) by a furious denunciation of 
 farmers and of landed j^roprietors. He had 
 known them to hate them all his life lonof, 
 so he told his hearers ; stating that he had 
 often fought the battle of labour covertly, 
 before he was able to espouse the cause 
 openly. 
 
 ' On returning home a week or two later, 
 my farmer friend immediately made known 
 his suspicions to me, and I went up north 
 to judge for myself ; but the young man 
 was gone. He had sailed for Australia as 
 the pioneer of an emigration agency for 
 farm-labourers and agriculturists ; that was 
 all I could learn. His commission would 
 lead him to be a perpetual rover in uncer- 
 tain localities and for uncertain times. 
 Eumour said that he had left a wife and 
 child behind him. I charged the authori- 
 tative representatives of the Union to 
 forward information of his movements to 
 me ; but I have never received any. Xo
 
 272 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 notice has ever been taken of my most 
 anxious petition. But, indeed, on observing 
 my anxiet}^ my friend seemed to change 
 his mmd, declared that he had probably 
 been mistaken, that I had attached too 
 much importance to his fancy by half, and 
 entreated me to dismiss from my mind his 
 previous statement. I believe he was 
 alarmed by the effect he had produced. 
 
 * Now, I have told you my story, and I 
 want you to consult your brother about it. 
 It seemed easier to me to speak to you than 
 to him. You are both cleverer than I am, 
 and have seen more of the world. I should 
 wish, if it were possible, before my days 
 are ended, to take any measure that still 
 might be practicable for the recovery of ni}^ 
 son. You es23ecially, Mrs. Smith — who 
 seem to me, more than any person I ever 
 met, to enter into the heart of others' 
 sorrows — I should be unutterably grateful 
 if you could suggest to me any line of con-
 
 'ATHWART THE GLOOMTVG FLATS: 273 
 
 duct, any steps that I still might take in 
 hopes that even now my son might close 
 my dying eyes ; or, if it were the case that 
 he had married and had, perhaps, left little 
 children in the old country, that I might 
 find again in my grandchild the little 
 innocent boy that used to run by my side 
 over these fields and fens. Tell me, my 
 dear lady, for I am a very inexperienced 
 old man in practical matters, what Avould 
 you do if you were in my place T 
 
 ' You had better ask me, dear father,' she 
 said, ' what have I done, being in your 
 place ?' 
 
 Sobs shook her voice ; finding which 
 the old man, greatly disturbed at having 
 upset her, began a process of soothing and 
 apology, blaming himself for having 
 troubled her, assuring her how gladly, if 
 he were capable of it, he would be or do 
 anything to be of use to her, begging 
 her, at her leisure, to think over what he 
 VOL. I. 18
 
 274 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 had said, and to consult lier brother 
 about it. 
 
 'Now, you will not be troubled any 
 longer by anything I may have told you, 
 or I shall blame myself greatly. You 
 have done me a great favour,' he said, at 
 parting, ' in taking this quiet walk with me ; 
 and the mere hope that you will give your 
 thoughts at some moments of leisure to my 
 case, and will, if it commends itself to your 
 judgment, ask the same favour of your 
 brother, lifts a load from my mind.' 
 
 ' And vou will not sio;n that loyal or 
 philanthropic will just yet ?' she said, 
 smilino' • lono- habits of self-control render- 
 ing it easy to her to regain the mastery over 
 all unusual expression of feeling. 
 
 ' Well, the fact of the matter is this, Mrs. 
 Smith — the lawyers hereabouts declare they 
 don't know how to draw up a will in favour 
 of the Queen, and they seem very doubtful 
 about the infirmary. They think that they
 
 'ATHWART THE GLOOMING FLATS: 275 
 
 must go to London about such a business 
 as that.' 
 
 ' Well, then, don't buy their tickets 
 for them without consulting me. Now 
 I must be off, for I want to look in at 
 James Daily's by the way.' 
 
 And she went ; but not before, to her 
 companion's supreme astonishment, she had 
 lifted his hand to her lips, her whole face 
 colouring with feeling. 
 
 What if his housekeeper saw it ! There 
 could be nothing more likely, for she was 
 always shutting the windows. 
 
 18—2
 
 CHAPTER YIII. 
 
 AN UNEXPECTED INVITATION. 
 
 HE first object that met Jessie's 
 eye at the breakfast-table next day 
 was a letter addressed to herself 
 by Aiirea Chapel, begging her attendance 
 and her brother's at the wedding, to take 
 place next week, with Leopold Stuckley. 
 
 Jessie was surprised ; she had no reason 
 to count upon such an in\dtation. Under 
 the circumstances it appeared to her to 
 have been dictated by questionable taste. 
 Her brother's refusal might surely be 
 counted upon as a matter of course ; he
 
 AN UNEXPECTED INVITATION. 277 
 
 would, she imagined, be little likely to 
 desire to occupy, figuratively, the position 
 of guest without a wedding-garment at the 
 feast. For herself, she shrank from the 
 vulgar display and the forced mirth which 
 are apt to distinguish such ceremonies, 
 which disguise the solemnity of lifelong 
 obligations with sorry jests, and degrade 
 the expression of the deepest emotions to 
 the level of bibulous utterances. That 
 precise combination of religion, the world, 
 and the flesh, to be met with most fre- 
 quently at orthodox weddings, offended 
 lier principles, violated her opinions, and 
 simply disgusted her taste. 
 
 Without further comment upon the letter 
 than an intimation of her own intention 
 not to be present, Jessie handed it to her 
 brother, who read it, played with his break- 
 fast in an altered manner, and quickly left 
 the room. 
 
 Jessie, ignorant of the previous letter
 
 278 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 from Aurea, wliicli still lay in his safest 
 keeping, was startled by his change of 
 manner, and by his precipitate retreat, into 
 the conviction that his love for ' Golden - 
 hair ' had been a deeper thing than she had 
 known of. How she had mistaken him ! 
 In her self-accusation she blamed the mental 
 preoccupation which had led her in her own 
 troubles to neo^lect the sis^ns of his. 
 
 Yet how was it possible, she asked her- 
 self, that such a man as he undoubtedl}^ 
 was, could care for such a girl as she held 
 Aurea Chapel to be? What could he find 
 beneath the gold that his own fancy had 
 not bred there ? Being a deeply reasonable 
 woman, however, she dismissed the question 
 with a remembrance ; for she did not foro-et 
 that her half-brother George had expressed 
 the same feeling when she married their 
 father's secretary and estate agent, Henry 
 Smith. 
 
 ^ What could she see in the fellow beyond
 
 AN UNEXPECTED INVITATION, 279 
 
 a handsome exterior, cleverer conversation 
 and more agreeable manners than might 
 always be met with in men of his class ?' 
 That was what others asked. What she 
 saw in him was a spiritual and mental 
 kinsman, an enthusiast for her ideals, a 
 would-be righter of social wrongs, a lover 
 of the people whom she loved, a possible 
 uplifter and saviour of society, her fellow- 
 worker and guide, and the immediate in- 
 spirer of her enthusiasm. She was wrong, 
 perhaps : the man in himself was none of 
 these things ; indeed, the sequel seemed 
 to prove as much to others — to her it only 
 proved a purpose delayed, but yet to be 
 fulfilled ; a life marred, but not lost. The 
 man was not yet that which he was meant 
 to be ; but some day he would rise to the 
 height of that which she alone had seen in 
 him, whether she knew it or not. For 
 three years he and she had been about her 
 father's fields and farms together on errands
 
 28o THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 beneficial to the poorer tenants. For three 
 years he had indoctrinated her with notions 
 on the subject of popular rights strangely 
 at variance with the prejudices of her 
 family ; and in her ready philanthropy he 
 found the surest advocate of the tenets he 
 sought to teach her. Seeds deeply sown 
 in a nature so rich as hers lastingly 
 flourished : could she suspect, inexperienced 
 girl as she was, that in the friend who had 
 brought them to her they had but a surface- 
 growth where self-love had pricked the 
 scanty soil ? 
 
 Jessie Apers was but sixteen when her 
 father's mental and bodily incapacities led 
 to the introduction of Henry Smith into the 
 family as secretary, manager of the estate, 
 and companion to her brother in his country 
 pursuits. The position which Smith thus 
 occupied was an anomalous one, sometliing 
 superior to a bailifi^, and inferior to a tutor. 
 As a result, Jessie's step-mother regarded
 
 AJV UNEXPECTED INVITATION. 281 
 
 the girl's attachment to him as she might 
 have done her esteem of the groom. 
 
 The second Mrs. Apers's own heart had 
 never spoken until the peerage gave it 
 leave. Externals were everything to her ; 
 not from what a man was in himself, but 
 from the settino- of liis circumstances did 
 he derive his value in her estimation. It 
 therefore never occurred to her to question 
 the wisdom of an arrangement by which 
 the secretary and the daughter of the house 
 w^orked together for common ends, spoke 
 together a common language, were thrown 
 together by special sympathy in enthu- 
 siasms foreign to that place and family. 
 Fortmiately, the Xemesis of family pride 
 may often be met with thus, at its heels. 
 For three 3^ears no word had been spoken 
 restricting the secretary in his friendship 
 with Jessie ; then the storm broke. The 
 }'oung lady declared him a gentleman, and 
 requested her step-mother to treat him as
 
 282 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 such. Mrs. Apers was coldly contemptuous, 
 and in tlie incapacity of lier husband 
 appealed to her son. George, who was but 
 a lad, boylike, wondered what his sister 
 could find in the fellow; and between them, 
 he and his mother gave the agent his 
 dismissal. 
 
 Then, although they chd not know it, 
 and Jessie only learnt it with other bitter 
 facts later in life, Henry Smith, the hitherto 
 irreproachable secretary, had a despairing 
 fit of drinking. He appeared in Jessie's 
 presence before they parted with a haggard 
 face and bloodshot eyes, and she, woman- 
 like, attributed these evidences of disorder 
 solely to grief at his banishment from her 
 company. 
 
 This evident proof of the reality of his 
 affection touched her deeply. She clung 
 with fidelity to her choice, as such a girl 
 would be sure to do; informed her step- 
 mother, wlien stung by reproaches, that she
 
 AN UNEXPECTED INVITATION. 283 
 
 would never marry any other man; wrote 
 to him at intervals; and finally, escaped 
 from moral persecution which she could no 
 longer endure by marrying him when she 
 came of age. She was independent, so far as 
 £300 a year, which came to her in right of 
 her own mother, could make her so ; and her 
 father's consent was not to be thought of, 
 simply because Mr. Apers had long become 
 incapable of consenting to anything, or of 
 furthering anything, even the prolongation 
 of his own unfortunately paralyzed exist- 
 ence. 
 
 There were no other sons or daughters. 
 Jessie and George were therefore all the 
 more to each other. The young man had 
 a kind heart, and much faith in his half- 
 sister. When he could be made to believe 
 that she really meant it, he offered to stand 
 by her, and even to espouse her cause 
 a<xainst that of his own mother, whose 
 judgment he did not highly esteem ; but
 
 284 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 Jessie declined absolutely to permit him to 
 involve himself in her fortunes. 
 
 IN'ot until the day before they were 
 married did Henry Smith divulge the 
 secret of his family and of his father's 
 abode, and then to Jessie only. To do him 
 justice, he told his intended wife the whole 
 story, omitting' nothing of his jflight from 
 Sodden Fen, nor of his successful conceal- 
 ment of his identity since. He justified this 
 concealment by the declaration, that having 
 abandoned his home in early life, he would 
 not again return to it, when to do so would 
 mean to sue for forgiveness he had no right 
 to expect. Further, having been expressly 
 cast off by his father in youth, he would 
 not again communicate with him, when 
 such a course might be construed into an 
 intention to claim an inheritance his own 
 action had justly forfeited. 
 
 To Jessie's partial judgment, there 
 seemed at the time something not alto-
 
 AN UNEXPECTED INVITATION. 285 
 
 o^ether mistaken in this latter feeline;. 
 But when giving the too trustful girl this 
 plausible account of his history, there was 
 one confession which Henry Smith neg- 
 lected to make — it was that of the habit 
 which had led to the quarrel with his 
 father, and Jessie had not then learnt to 
 suspect him. 
 
 Not seeing her way at once clearly 
 through all his intricacies of conduct, 
 Jessie listened and sighed ; certain only 
 that it must be her duty at the earliest 
 opportunity to reconcile husband and father. 
 She spoke ; but in answer to earnest en- 
 treaties, her husband retorted by pointing 
 to her OAvn relations with her step -mother. 
 He declined to observe that their cases 
 were different; yet he had been a lad be- 
 neath the rule of a reasonable father, she a 
 woman grown when she asserted her indepen- 
 dence. She, her own mistress by her father's 
 living death and her dead mother's bequest.
 
 286 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 had been required to direct her conduct by 
 the prejudices of a step-mother whom it was 
 impossible to respect ; he, a mere boy, had 
 refused to submit to the government of a 
 kind-hearted though hot-tempered father. 
 She followed her conscience and her judg- 
 ment in claiming her independence ; he 
 violated the one, and had been incapable, of 
 the other, when he had asserted his. But 
 he could not or would not see the differ- 
 ence, and Jessie's lips were thus constantly 
 closed on the subject. 
 
 At the time of their marriage, Henry 
 Smith was employed as an organizing agent 
 of the Trades Unions. His wife's money 
 enabled him to devote his energies more 
 unreservedly than he had yet been in a 
 position to do to the cause of the labourer. 
 They moved about constantly as occasion 
 called them, making a home in a succession 
 of lodgings, happy for a brief period in 
 their possession of each other, and she, at
 
 AN UNEXPECTED INVITATION. 287 
 
 least, in her faith in a better future for 
 others which their efforts were to serve to 
 accomplish. Yet, through every hour's 
 content, the one great cause of trouble was 
 ever new for Jessie. How Ions: would her 
 husband persist in the alienation from his 
 father which had led him to ignore his 
 existence? To this soon were to be added 
 other and more poignant sources of suffer- 
 ing. 
 
 Henry Smith grew restless, tired of his 
 work, his wife, and of himself, and began 
 to talk of leaving the country for a land of 
 greater individual and national freedom. 
 Through these impatient lapses from the 
 restraint of duty, his wife made the first 
 discovery — to her the saddest of all — that 
 his love of the people had its root primarily 
 in love of self. 
 
 !N'ow first she perceived that whilst ready 
 enough to lay upon the altar the cherished 
 possessions and prejudices of others, he
 
 288 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 spared to take of liis own. Xow, for the 
 first time, she reflected that he liad had 
 ever^^thing to gain, where she had had all 
 things material to lose in their marriage. 
 For his love's sake she would have held 
 the world well lost; but what if the love 
 were not won, although the world was 
 lost! 
 
 Was it indeed the case that not as a 
 saviour, but as a sharer by choice in lower 
 tastes and habits he had lived among the 
 people, to his own abasement rather than 
 their elevation ? That not out of sympathy 
 with their good and pity for their hindrances 
 had he tolerated the evil that was among 
 them, but from real indifference to vice. All 
 this the young wife had begun to fear; but 
 she was as yet unaware that her husband 
 could be not merely a passive spectator, 
 but also an actual sharer in vice of one sort 
 at least. This also was to come, and came 
 at the end of two vears.
 
 AN UNEXPECTED INVITATION. 2S9 
 
 She was to have accompanied him to a 
 meeting of factory operatives out on strike, 
 whom he was to address, in a manufacturing 
 town; but their child was ill, and she stayed 
 at home, leavino- him thus without the usual 
 restraint of her society. The child was sud- 
 denly taken worse, and in the early morning 
 hours, as she sat with her dying baby upon 
 her knees, her husband staggered back to 
 her in a state which she could no lono^er, 
 as upon former occasions, mistake for the 
 disorder of grief A dead hope and a 
 degraded love were her memories of that 
 fatal night. 
 
 Well, children die and husbands come 
 back drunk in hundreds of hovels in the 
 land : these are but common sorrows after 
 all, shared with many a cottage wife whose 
 woes have never travelled farther than the 
 next street; but then this woman who so 
 shared in humble sorrows was without the 
 limitations assigned by narrower mental 
 VOL. I. 19
 
 290 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 conditions. Hers was a capacity for pain 
 as for joy, quickened by activitj^ of intellect, 
 and by a sense of moral degradation in the 
 presence of vice, which was the product of 
 educated sympathies. 
 
 Her husband rushed from her presence, in 
 the first shock of his disgraceful awakening, 
 as he had once before fled from his father's 
 home on the Fens; yet when she came to 
 find herself thus childless, and to all intents 
 and purposes a widow, the first distinct 
 feeling which brought her any comfort was 
 a consciousness of simple fellowship in 
 grief ^\dth those by her former world called 
 ^common.' 
 
 She would not choose to have been pro- 
 tected by artificial safeguards or by the 
 provisions of station fi'om a deep, true, per- 
 sonal knowledge of the actual life of men. 
 The thino^s that these toilimr, sorrowino^ 
 men and women, around her knew and suf- 
 fered, she too would know and suffer, rather
 
 AN UNEXPECTED INVITATION. 291 
 
 than, by availing herself of adventitious sur- 
 roundings, heighten for one of them the 
 effects of seemingly uneven contrast. She 
 desired no footpath selected for her feet ; 
 rather she rejoiced to tread the broad high- 
 way of daily life in company with the toil- 
 stained and heavy-laden multitude. And 
 as the years went on, and in spite of all her 
 inquiries her husband never returned to 
 her, she threw herself more and more 
 into the life of the people, which was hence- 
 forth to be her life. 
 
 Jessie's brother George gave her a home 
 in his curate's lodmio's in the manufacturing: 
 town where he worked before he came to 
 Slumsby; but her husband sent her no 
 message, no word of leave-taking. He 
 seemed to have removed himself entirely 
 out of her path. She heard, indeed, that he 
 had accepted an offer of the Trades to act 
 as Emigration Agent for the labourers, and 
 had sailed for Australia; but for a consider- 
 
 19—2
 
 292 THE BAIL YS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 able period even upon this point she was 
 without certainty. 
 
 Up to the time that her removal to 
 Slumsby threw her into his father's way, 
 Henry Smith had sent his mfe neither letter 
 nor sign of life ; but her love for him had in his 
 absence the more easily condoned his offences, 
 finding in his abrupt departure even matter 
 for hope, as a token of possibly shamefaced 
 remorse. 
 
 In the class fi'om which Jessie had sprung, 
 family misfortunes are apt to be hidden like 
 siof-ns of disofrace. Such untoward accidents 
 of existence as wealth cannot exclude, must 
 persistently be ignored. Undeniable failures, 
 infirmities, and defects must, if possible, be 
 consigned by the denial of perpetual silence 
 to seemintj^ oblivion : and nothino- less to 
 his credit than an honourable death must 
 ever be mentioned of a well-connected man. 
 Jessie's step-mother, therefore, made no 
 inquiries as to the disappearance of her
 
 AN UNEXPECTED INVITATION. 293 
 
 daughter's unwelcome husband, and was 
 relieved that his absence the better enabled 
 her completely to ignore his actual exist- 
 ence. To her brother George, Jessie was in 
 reality less the wife of his father's bailiff and 
 secretary, Henry Smith — who had gone 
 to Australia indefinitely, after some sort of 
 unexplained break-down, which occurred at 
 the death of their child — than Ids sister, 
 whose sensitiveness his unshaken love for- 
 bade him to wound by further intrusion into 
 the matter. But there is a simple commu- 
 nity in grief amongst those whose histories 
 are least often told, and in that honest genuine 
 fellowship Jessie Smith would share, less 
 for her own sake than for that of others. 
 
 This woman, whose chosen people were 
 of no particular set or family, and of no 
 particular station or rank in society, but 
 who were selected solely for what they Avere 
 in themselves, felt presently a strange joy 
 in the thought — I, too, can go among com-
 
 294 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 mon men and common women, and can say 
 to them alone : ^ I, too, am a sharer in com- 
 mon sorrows, and partaker in griefs which 
 the world holds vulgar. To me too, poor 
 cottaofe wife, the husband has come home 
 changed; ftr>»»7me too, village mother, death 
 has stolen the baby in my arms.' 
 
 Often after speaking with a calm voice 
 words of sympathy to such as these, the 
 pain which had cut her heart as she uttered 
 them would quiver in her breast for hours ; but 
 since in their candid simplicity they showed 
 her their sorrows, she would at any cost 
 avow her own, lest to them she should seem 
 the spectator of a day. Had she consulted 
 her own feelings merely, she would often 
 have withheld the facts of her griefs fi'om 
 inadequate translation as to their effects by 
 less sensitive natures; but rather than seem 
 as one who came among them from another 
 sphere, calmly listening to details of sin and 
 sorrow remote from her avowed if not from
 
 AN UNEXPECTED INVITA TION 295 
 
 her real experience, it was better that she 
 should suffer from having spoken. It was 
 better that they, judging by themselves, 
 should underestimate the extent and nature 
 of her grief, than that she by her silence 
 should drive the sense of loneliness or of 
 class -alienation home to one simple-minded 
 woman such as Susan, or to one morbidly 
 distrustful man such as James Dailv. 
 
 ' I too, have been deserted by my hus- 
 band,' she would often say to such an one, 
 ^ just as you have been. No, I am not in- 
 deed chargeable to the parish, so that is 
 worse for you ; but then you have your 
 children, and my comfortable home and all 
 that it contains does not make up to me 
 quite so much as you suppose. Think what 
 you would do yourself with empt}' arms 
 and an empty heart in a big house, with no 
 trustful little children to teach you to believe 
 in love, with no happy faces to pillow on 
 your breast, with no husband to come home
 
 296 THE DAILVS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 to you when the day's Avork is done, and no 
 wiilmg work to do for them all the day 
 lono- ! We are more even in our lots than 
 
 o 
 
 you can understand.' 
 
 In all this there was no reasoned adop- 
 tion of sentiment — it was the purely natural 
 outcome of a true and single mind ; of a 
 mind clinging to those conditions which 
 form the basis of life, to the rejection, often, 
 of the superstructure artificially reared upon 
 it ; of a mind, therefore, which found itself 
 little agitated by the troubles of society — by 
 fashionable afflictions involving mainly the 
 externals of existence — but which was 
 stirred to its deepest depths by genuine 
 woes of whatever nature and wherever met. 
 
 Intellectual cultivation, quickened imagi- 
 nation, and nerves rendered sensitive by 
 inheritance, may indeed constitute superior 
 claims for sympathy; but nothing can be 
 said in legitimate defence of that fashionable 
 estimate of sorrow which takes account of
 
 AN UNEXPECTED INVITATION. 297 
 
 the social status of the sufferer as such. 
 There is probably no human being who 
 suffers as little upon this earth as the well- 
 to-do man or woman who combines social 
 advantages with normal intelligence and a 
 fine sense of selection from the inferior 
 world. 
 
 AVhen Jessie and her brother came to 
 Slumsby Vicarage, she alone knew that she 
 should find herself somewhere in the neigh- 
 bourhood of her husband's boyish home ; 
 but she had not known that the connection 
 mth his father was to be so near and inti- 
 mate. Her purposely planned interview 
 with Mr. Smith, in the seclusion of the 
 decoy, had been keenly affecting to her. 
 Eagerly looked for and deeply felt, it had 
 served to stir to the depths those emotions 
 of sorrow in the loss of her husband, and of 
 despair of his ever returning to her, Avhich 
 had brooded in her soul, unshared by any 
 relative, for more tlian four 3'ears.
 
 298 THE DAILY S OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 She pined to divulge her identity to the 
 old man, and she full}^ purposed yet to do 
 so ; but as she had never yet told her 
 husband's real story, even to her brother, 
 a difficulty lay before her in the disclosure 
 of facts so long and so carefully guarded ; 
 moreover, for the old man's own sake, too 
 sudden an avowal might be undesirable. Cir- 
 cumstances, however, clearly indicated some 
 speedy development, in which the affection 
 of wife and father might warmly unite for 
 the recovery of the absent husband and son. 
 Then, what about Sodden Fen and the 
 chances of popular inheritance ? 
 
 Well might Jessie tell Mr. Smith that the 
 instant of realization most frequently con- 
 verts the improbable into the impossible. 
 At the moment in which he w^as inviting 
 her to attempt his conversion to her views 
 with regard to the people's claims on the 
 Fen, and was bidding her at the outset to 
 entertain the best hopes of success, her
 
 AxV UNEXPECTED INVITATION. 299 
 
 husband seemed to rise up and to come 
 between them, wresting the inheritance out 
 of her hand. 
 
 There were difficulties in the situation 
 which mio'ht well need thinkin^^ over. If 
 she helped Mr. Smith to recover his son — 
 in herself reo;ainino' a husband — she would 
 personally be a sharer in the profit, and a 
 partner in the self-seeking convention b}' 
 wliich Sodden Fen was withheld from the 
 people in moral, if not legal, violation of 
 its blood-stained charter. Her husband^s 
 father no doubt was blameless, since his 
 conscience was clear in the matter ; but 
 Jessie felt that when once her husband, 
 with her aid and consent, succeeded his 
 father in possession of the Sodden estate, 
 she could never again look upon the land 
 but with eyes of the people whose hopes 
 she had cheated. 
 
 Could her husband be brought to see 
 with her eves and to renounce the estate,
 
 300 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 which, after all, he had never expected to 
 inherit, having during a lifetime believed it 
 forfeited by his boyish sin ? Yain notion, 
 dismissed as soon as conceived ! Pride had 
 kept him absent during his father's health 
 and strength, and it was morally certain 
 that he would never consent to sue for for- 
 giveness ; but, dear as independence and 
 pride might be to him — dearer even than 
 Sodden Fen — once let him know that he 
 might preserve both, and he would return 
 to benefit by the change in his father's 
 disposition. 
 
 Ever since her husband had told her 
 the story of his sin against his father, 
 Jessie had been accustomed to consider his 
 paternal inheritance as justly and irre- 
 vocably forfeited. Then when she came 
 to Slumsby, heard the historical tradition 
 of Diggory Daily's popular bequest, and 
 met Mr. Smith in the flesh, her mind had 
 fastened upon the restitution of Sodden Fen
 
 AN UNEXPECTED INVITATION. 301 
 
 as the one growth of good clearly intended 
 to be the final end of so much ill. The 
 longing to be personally instrumental in 
 brinmio: about such a result had been at 
 the root of the strong hold the question had 
 immediately taken upon her imagination. 
 
 It was a strange combination of chances 
 which seemed thus doubly to place Sodden 
 Fen in her hand, yet in neither case to give 
 her possession ; for true possession argues 
 the right of renunciation, and that right 
 alone w^as the one that she coveted. 
 
 Mr. Smith must no doubt be allowed to 
 sign the will that he had ready prepared, 
 which bequeathed Sodden Fen to his son ; and 
 failing him, to her unknown self as his wife. 
 Together, he and she must combine to find 
 out that husband ; and having found him, 
 she must be prepared, as mistress of Sodden 
 Fen, for the lie that her life would give to 
 her teaching. 
 
 * George,' she said to her brother that
 
 THE DAILYS OF SODDEN FEN. 
 
 evening, ' will yoa go down to the farm to- 
 morrow to witness Mr. Smith's signature?' 
 
 'What have you taken up with Mr. 
 Smith so for ?' was the answer somewhat 
 impatiently given. ' It appears to me that 
 Mr. Smith's private affairs don't concern 
 us ; but there is another matter that I 
 wished to speak to you about : with regard 
 to this invitation to Miss Chapel's wedding, 
 Jessie, I intend to accept it. You will 
 decline, I suppose ?' 
 
 ' I will offer up my feelings if the 
 sacrifice will save yours, George ; other- 
 wise, I should prefer to stay at home.' 
 
 ^ Stay, then,' he said sadly, ^ for you can 
 do nothing for me in the matter.' 
 
 ' I will tell you why I have " taken up 
 ]Mr. Smith so," George, if you please.' 
 
 'A case of mutual confession, eh? Re- 
 serve it until I return from this wedding. 
 I shall run down home, Jessie, overnight, 
 and have a look at my mother and father.'
 
 AN UNEXPECTED INVITA TIO N. 303 
 
 Jessie, noting that he was thoroughly up- 
 set by the sight of Aurea's invitation, felt 
 that it was no moment in which to make 
 her disclosure, and suffered him to depart 
 accordingly. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD AND LONDON. 
 
 G., C. <t Co.
 
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