The sergeant seemed so much affected, that I tried to divert his attention by inquiring into the beginnings of poor William’s troubles.
“Why, miss, he and I were never agreed about matters of that kind. I always took a different view of his difficulties from what he did; and I should have tried a different way to get out of them. As soon as the war ended, his reverses began; and like all the rest of the farmers, he complained of the hardships of the agricultural classes, and that they had not fair play. It was of no use my reminding him that the farmers made enormous profits during the war, which could not in the nature of things be kept up for any long time: he was still crying out for higher duties on the importation of corn, and complaining of the prosperity of manufactures; just as if the welfare of the one class did not depend on that of the other. Then Mr. Malton’s taking several farms into his own hands was a great grievance to him. When I saw what was doing, I advised him to keep no more land than he had capital to make the most of, and to send his children into the world, or let them provide for themselves under Mr. Malton; but he would do no such thing. So, from keeping more land than he could cultivate properly, his capital was returned in less and less proportions, and he went down in the world, and his children with him, till ruin overtook most of them.”
“It seems a hard thing,” said I, “that these large farmers should ruin their humbler neighbours; and why need it happen now more than formerly?”
“Changes are always going on in society, Miss Lucy, and there are usually some who suffer, and many who are benefited by these changes. Whenever such a change takes place, we hear a cry in favour of old times, and complaints that we do not go back to the old ways. But, to say nothing of the good or evil of old ways, is it possible to go back to them? In the present case, for instance, is it possible to set back our population, our manufactures, our modes of tilling the ground, to what they were when small farms were not found fault with? Certainly not: so the question comes to this:—having a multitude more mouths to feed, and requiring more and more capital to make the ground yield its utmost, is it wiser to obtain an increased production by changing our farming system, or to let the poorer population starve, that a certain class may continue to be landed proprietors who cannot properly afford to be so?”
“It is clear,” replied I, “that the general good must be considered before the indulgence of any particular class. But to whom is this question referred?”
“That is another point to be considered, miss. All these great questions are decided by the public interest, (unless some meddling law is interposed,) and not by individuals. As long as more corn is wanted, there is no use in railing at large farmers, or at those who buy of them, or at anybody. The demand cannot be prevented, and the supply will follow of course. Seeing all this, I could not be discontented with Mr. Malton for improving his land and trying new methods by which more corn was brought to market and at a cheaper rate than formerly; though I was sorry for Williams and others who could not keep up with him. My poor old friend never could agree with me there; nor could he hear with patience of the inclosure of our common. He was always afraid of too much corn being grown, and would never believe that the more food is raised, the more would be wanted.”
“Did he not see that a multitude in this kingdom have not food enough?”
“That, miss, he could not dispute; but his argument was, that while farmers are poor, there must be too much corn in the market. I never could get him to tell me why, if that were the case, Mr. Malton and others were busy enlarging their farms and taking in waste land.”
“That is what I was going to ask,” said I. “How can Mr. Malton afford to lay out a great deal of money which the land cannot pay back for years, if the business of farming is an unprofitable one?”
“He knows very well that whatever may be the changes of prices and the rise and fall of profits at various times, there will be a lasting demand for the produce of the soil; and that therefore landed property, with a sufficiency of capital to lay out upon it, must be a safe and lasting possession in the long run. For that long run he, as a large capitalist, can afford to wait.”
“Then it is an advantage to the public whom he supplies, and to the labourers whom he supports, as well as to himself, that he should carry on the work he has begun?”
“Certainly. He is preparing to feed many hundred human beings where only a few lean cattle grazed before. He circulates money now among his poor neighbours whom he pays for making his inclosures. They are very glad of their increase of wages, (as you may see if you go among them,) however much they may mourn over the loss of their common. This winter he will turn in his large flocks of sheep to bite every blade of grass and manure the ground. In the spring he will plough up the land, and afterwards sow it with turnips. Next winter, his sheep will feed off the turnips and give the land another dressing; and, during all this time, he is laying out a great deal of money on his fields without any other return than the scanty feed of his flocks. But, after this time, his land will begin to pay him back the expense of the purchase, of the fences, of the use of the teams, of the seed, and of the human labour which has been employed; and when it is improved to the utmost, he will probably find, or his children after him, that it is well worth while thus to employ his capital, and thus to wait for his profits.”
“If, for many years,” said I, “there has been less food in this country than was wanted, how happens it that so many commons are still un-inclosed?”
“Because it often answers better to improve land already cultivated than to spend money on wastes. Of late years, agriculture has been much studied in this country, and means have been discovered by which lands that have been under the plough for hundredshundreds of years have been made to produce more by half than in old times. This is the way that Mr. Malton grew rich. If there had been nothing more to be done with his fields than formerly, he would probably have taken in the common some years ago: but his time and money have been occupied in trying new methods of cultivation, which have answered very well and enabled him to increase his capital, notwithstanding the badness of the times, from which he was no more exempt than other people. Having brought his estate into a high degree of cultivation, he is now able to add to it.”
“And to fix his capital,” said I, “and wait for returns in a way which is not practicable for a small capitalist. Poor Williams, if he had been alive now, must have had his capital reproduced immediately or have been at a stand.”
The sergeant smiled while he observed that he saw he was not the only person who had conversed with me on the employment of capital. I told him how often I had listened to conversations between my father and his friends on the philosophy of the changes which were taking place in our village.
“There is another way,” said I, “in which it seems to me easy to prove that there is the best economy in large farms. If industry is limited by capital, and if a capital grows faster in proportion to its increase, a large capital must afford increased employment at a quicker rate than several small ones. Do you see what I mean?”
“Yes, miss; and I think you perfectly right. Here is a case. Mr. Malton began, we will say, with a farm of three hundred acres, and three neighbours with each a farm of one hundred, his capital being just equal to that of the three together. Mr. Malton would have the advantage, in the first place, of having his capital better invested. His one set of farm buildings would require less fixed capital than their three sets, though his might be treble the size. His fencing and the disposal of his fields might be managed to better advantage. He might proportion his stock and instruments more exactly than they could to the work to be performed—finding, for instance, that five horses could do the work which it would require a pair of horses on each of the three small farms to do. The fixed capital thus saved, Mr. Malton could employ at once in improving his land, and thus preparing for a further increase of capital; while his neighbours could only go on as they did before. When these improvements bring in their profits, he has a further sum to lay out in the employment of labour, and the fruits of that labour enrich him still more; and all this time, his three neighbours are left further and further behind, though their smaller capital may be growing in its due proportion. At the best, at the end of a few years, they can only make the most of their one or two or three hundred acres, while he supplies society with the produce of his one or two or three thousand.”
“Do you know,” I asked, “with how much land Mr. Malton began the world, and how much he has now?”
“I rather think he began upon six or seven hundred acres; and now he has some thousands under his own eye. One of his tenants holds a farm of fifteen hundred, and another of twelve hundred acres; and these men adopt all Mr. Malton’s improvements that their capital will allow, and have so increased the productiveness of their land as to be truly public benefactors.”
“Poor Norton will hardly have any chance of improving his little fortune in such a neighbourhood,” said I.
The sergeant shook his head, and said that he had tried to explain to Norton that as industry is proportioned to capital, it must answer better to let the labour of a society like ours to a large capitalist than to split it into portions which could not yield so full an aggregate return; but that Norton liked the idea of being a proprietor, and would listen to no evil bodings.
“If you were to go abroad, again, sergeant,” said I, “what would you do for want of somebody to advise? I suppose you found no foreigners so ready to look up to you as we are in your native village?”village?”
“My business abroad was not to teach but to learn,” he replied, smiling. “Yet there were some who used to ask me questions by the hour together about the ways of my own country. It was the examination that I was thus led into that induced me to consider the reasons and rules of our public and domestic economy in the way which makes my neighbours here come to me for advice.”
“What sort of people were they who used to question you?” I asked. “Soldiers do not generally study these matters much.”
“It is a pity they do not,” replied he, “so much opportunity as they have of observing the ways of different countries. Those that I speak of were mostly soldiers, however; they were my companions in the hospital where I lost my arm. I was confined there many weeks, and a prisoner too; so that I was glad to amuse my thoughts by conversation whenever I could get it.”
“You could speak Spanish, then?”
“I managed to pick up enough both of French and Spanish to make myself understood. If I had not, I should have been forlorn indeed, for not an Englishman was in that hospital but myself. I think I hardly could have borne to lose my liberty, my limb, and all intercourse with my countrymen at once, if I had been unable to talk with the people of the place. As it was, it was sad enough.”
“I have always wished,” said I, with some hesitation, “to hear the history of that terrible time from yourself; but I never ventured to ask it.”
The sergeant smiled as he assured me that I need not have scrupled, as it was a pleasure to him to go back to the remembrance of old times.
“I will begin with telling you, miss, how I got my wound. It was the first wound I ever had, though I had been often in the very thick of the fight. It was strange enough that on this particular day——”
Just at this moment the clock struck one. A shade passed over the face of the old man, and he stopped short. Knowing his passion for punctuality, I started up with many apologies for having detained him so long, and promised to call on him one day for his story, which it really was no little disappointmentdisappointment to me to give up for the present.
Before I left the churchyard, I looked back and saw that, though he was late for dinner, the sergeant had paused to look once more into his old friend’s grave.
A large portion of the newly-inclosed land belonged to Sir Henry Withers, whose plantations were celebrated in verse, as we have seen, in company with Mr. Malton’s fields. Sir Henry had had a world of trouble in laying his plans about these plantations; for, in addition to the discontents of the people about the common, he had met with opposition from other quarters. Every arable cultivator grumbled over Malton’s pastures and Withers’s woods by turns. Every shepherd looked upon every spot occupied by a tree as so much food taken from his flock. Sir Henry’s bailiff himself could not bear to see a rood of ground that was worth any thing for other purposes devoted to planting, and was continually offering his advice as to how much should be taken in, and how large a sweep the fences should make. If his master had followed his advice, his plantations would not only have made a very extraordinary zig-zag patchwork, but the expense of fencing round so many odd angles would have exceeded the saving in good land; to say nothing of the advantage lost to the trees planted in a poor soil by having none of the protection of more flourishing neighbours. Sir Henry and his forester laughed together at the idea of having his plantations look like an assortment of pincushions, and of rearing a mile of fence where half a mile would do, for the sake of saving a few acres more for the plough. These two carried their point against all the little world of Brooke; and the future woods were appointed to sweep round the foot of this hill, to retire into yonder hollow, to wave on the top of that healthy slope, and to shelter from the north winds all this expanse of corn-fields. It was a delight to the imagination to picture what they would be a hundred years hence, when hanging woods would ornament a landscape at present bare and barren.
It was partly this pleasure, and partly the activity of the scene, which made us love to watch the process of planting. The inclosing was the first work; and we were for some time in dread that stone walls would be the kind of fence fixed upon, as the soil was too poor for a quickset hedge, considering the great extent to which it must have been carried; and fences of furze and larch would have required too much attention in the neighbourhood of such large flocks of sheep as Mr. Malton’s. Sir Henry, however, could not tolerate the idea of stone walls any more than ourselves, and determined to construct an earthen fence which might last for nine or ten years, by which time the thinnings of the plantations might provide a substitute. A ditch was dug, sloping outwards but presenting a straight cut of a foot and a half next the plantation, on the verge of which was raised a wall of sods, three or four feet high, round the top of which ran a single bar of paling.
The next operation was to drain those portions of the soil which required it—a trouble and expense which, though great at first, becomes less and less burdensome every year; since, if the drains are properly kept open and scoured, so that the water may remain pure enough to nourish the trees, it will be gradually absorbed by them, so as to turn a swampy into a firm soil. The marking out of the road and paths was done at the same time with the draining, as one ditch served to drain the road on one side and the plantation on the other. This part of the work was the most agreeable of all to lookers-on, and to a man of taste like Sir Henry, who saw how much of the use and beauty of his woods depended on this part of his plan. He pointed out with delight how air would be conducted into the recesses of the groves by these pathways; and how the road, now barely marked out with the spade, would soon become a dry green sward, where the fellings of the woods would be hereafter collected, and where their owner might go to and fro to watch how his forest nurslings throve.
Our next curiosity was to know what trees Sir Henry meant to plant the most of. There were to be oaks, of course; but a far greater proportion of larch. “Larch! Ugly, mean-looking larch!” we exclaimed; and went on to rail against its appearance when planted in small patches, or on the ridge of a hill, or sloping away from the wind. But Sir Henry told us that if we had seen forests of larch we should have had a very different idea of its beauty. He had been in Switzerland; and he described to us the sublimity of the woods there, where the mountains are clothed with larch as high as any vegetation can stretch, and where the tender green of its young shoots in spring is as beautiful as its sober autumn shade is grand. To comfort us under our complaints that we were never likely to look upon Swiss mountains, he told us that we need go no farther than Scotland to see what a forest of larches might be made. He owned, however, that he had regarded use more than beauty in his choice of the larch. This tree grows better on exposed and poor soils than in rich and sheltered situations;—not so fast, certainly; but its timber is of a better texture, and it is free from blight. The oak and ash, therefore, were planted on the best parts of Sir Henry’s grounds; and the rest was given up to the larch, which was expected to grow more rapidly than all the trees of the forest besides, to furnish wood as tough and durable as that of the oak, and moreover to improve the quality of the ground as rapidly and effectually as could be done by any other process. By the annual casting of its leaves, the larch enriches the soil beneath as with a regular supply of manure. The coarse heath gradually disappears, and the finer grasses spring up, till a larch wood becomes, from being a barren moor, a pasture land carpeted with white clover: a wonderful change to take place without any assistance from human labour beyond that of putting larch plants into the ground. The plantation may be used as pasture without injury to the young trees, after a ten years’ growth; and hence arise other advantages,—shade to the flock in summer, warmth in winter, and shelter from the storm. What wonder that Sir Henry planted many larches!
Few rural employments are more interesting to the by-stander than that of planting. I have stood for hours with my brothers, watching the people at their work. First a labourer took off with his spade about a foot of turf, and laid it aside, while he dug the pit, and broke the clods, and loosened the soil near. Then his wife, if he had one, or his boy, placed the plant, just brought from the nursery, in the earth, and spread the roots abroad in their natural direction, taking especial care not to twist or bruise the tender fibres which draw nourishment from the soil. Then the pit was filled up; the earth being first gently sprinkled over the roots, and afterwards turned in and trodden down. The turf was next cut in two with the spade and laid upside down on each side of the plant, so as to meet round its stem. The purpose of reversing the turf is that the nursling may not be affected by drought, or injured by the growth of grass or weeds close beside it. We were sure never to be long at any one spot without seeing either Sir Henry or his forester, who were always going their rounds among the labourers. They told us that no one thing is so much to be dreaded in the work of plantation as slovenliness in putting the plants into the ground; and as it was impossible to convince the labourers of all the mischief of bruising or twisting the roots, there was nothing for it but keeping an eye upon them continually, to see that they did not make more haste than good speed. For this reason, planting was not in the present case, as in too many, done by contract; but even here, where the labourers were paid by the day, they were apt to grow impatient and think it foolish to fiddle-faddle about the root-fibres of a tree as carefully as about the tender organs of an infant. They made many attempts, too, in order to save trouble, to bring more plants at a time from the nursery than they could set before night: but the forester having once found half-a-dozen covered over in a ditch during a frost, made such vehement complaints, that thenceforward the nurslings were removed as they were wanted and in security.
I began this winter by admiring Sir Henry’s benevolence to future generations more than I saw reason to do afterwards. I imagined that he would reap none of the fruits of his present outlay of trouble and capital, and that all that he did in planting was for the sake of his children and his country. He did consider both. He was well aware of the value of an ample supply of timber to a nation like ours, whose naval resources can never be too plentiful, and whose magnificent works of art create a perpetual demand for the treasures of the forest. He was mindful, also, of the vast increase to the value of his estates which he might provide by planting his inferior lands; but, with all this, he hoped, as it was fair he should, that his own revenues would be improved by the same means, perhaps before he had passed the middle of life. I was present one day when he was pointing out to my father the difference in his mode of planting two portions of land, and the comparative profit he expected to receive in a few years.
“These fifty acres, you observe,” said he, “are not for pasturage, though you see two larches to one oak. Half the larches are to remain for timber trees; the other half are nurses, and will be thinned out in five or six years.”
“O dear!” interrupted I, “before they are large enough to be of any use.”
“I expect they will pay me,” he continued, “for the outlay on all these fifty acres. They would be worth little if we lived far away from any population but that of our own estates; but there is demand enough for bark, for poles, &c., to take off all I shall have to dispose of. The bark will sell for about half as much as oak bark; I suppose it will fetch from four to five pounds a ton. The quality of the wood is so good, that stakes and poles of it are in great request for gates and palings. The smaller sticks I may want myself; or if not, Mr. Malton or other farmers will be glad of them for supports for their sheep nets, when the flocks are eating turnips off the ground. They sell at about a shilling a dozen.”
“You will pay yourself in six years at farthest,” said my father. “Do you expect to make more or less of those other fifty acres where you plant larch only?”
“More in the long run, but nothing for ten years or upwards. I have not planted so close there, you see; so that there will be no thinning at the end of five years. The original expense of planting is less, of course;—about twenty shillings an acre, at the most. Then we must remember the rent of the soil, which is perhaps a shilling an acre.”
“Then to this thirty shillings an acre,” observed my father, “you must add the ten years’ interest, and the outlay on inclosing; there are no other expenses, I think?”
“Not any. There are twelve hundred larches on each acre. I shall remove one-third in ten years; and it will be strange if the bark and timber of four hundred do not pay all the expenses we have mentioned, with compound interest. Then I shall have eight hundred trees on every acre, the very lowest value of which will be ten pounds; and the ground will be worth four times what it is at present. It will be pasturage worth letting by that time.”
“Then,” said my father, “after having paid yourself, these fifty acres, which were a month ago worth a rental of only fifty shillings, will bring in ten or twelve pounds a year, and have five hundred pounds’ worth of larches upon them. Upon my word, this is a pretty profit!”
“Consider, too,” said Sir Henry, “that without costing me a farthing more, the thinnings of the plantation will add to my income at a continually increasing rate. I shall be able to employ more and more labourers every year:—not that I need tell you so; but I put in this observation for your daughter’s sake. She looks quite disappointed in me—disappointed to find that I look for any profit from the measures which will benefit my family and society at large. Have I guessed your thoughts rightly, Miss Lucy?”
So rightly, that I blushed and my father laughed, while he assured Sir Henry that we none of us doubted his disinterestedness.
“What different ways there are of benefiting one’s country and posterity, in different parts of the world!” I exclaimed. “In Canada, a landed proprietor would clear away as many trees as possible, I suppose, if he wished to do a patriotic thing.”
“It is one of the most interesting employments I know of,” said my father, “to trace how the same principles lead men to directly opposite or widely different modes of conduct, according to circumstances; and if men studied this fact a little more carefully than they do, the world would be incalculably happier than it seems likely to be for some time to come. If statesmen and legislators saw that usages and laws must be varied with lapse of time and change of circumstances, we should be freed from many useless institutions. If our men of power saw that what is beneficial to a country in one age may be hurtful in another, we should have a better economy and a wiser distribution of our wealth. If our people discerned the same thing, they would leave off complaining of new measures because they are not old, and railing against their best friends because the advice they offer would not have suited the condition of our grandfathers.”
Sir Henry observed that he had heard far more said about what would have been thought of Mr. Malton’s large farm a century ago, than what ought to be thought of it now. In the same manner, the wise men who study how the resources of the nation may be best managed and improved are called hard-hearted, because the measures they recommend are different from such as were necessary when our population was less numerous, when there was less competition in commerce, and a smaller demand for agricultural produce.
“There can be no surer mark of ignorance and prejudice,” observed my father. “The king of Persia is prejudiced when he laughs at a king of England for having only one wife; and every Englishman who thinks the king of Persia wicked for having twenty, is ignorant. He does not know that the religion of the monarch allows the custom. Any one of our labourers would be prejudiced if he blamed an Indian for waste for burning a whole pine-tree at once; and that Indian would show himself ignorant if he laughed at Sir Henry for spending so much time, and labour, and money, in planting trees, of which the Indians have more than they know what to do with.”
“Any one such instance,” observed Sir Henry, “is enough to silence for ever all objections to plans because they are new. I would desire no better instance of the variations introduced by time into the way of employing labour and capital than the one you have reminded me of, by your mention of Indian forests. There was a time when this island was as much overgrown with wood as any part of North America now is.”
“What a different place it must have been then!” said I.
“Different indeed! Vast forests extending over whole districts; the climate as cold as now in the north of Russia; (for countries in our latitude become temperate only in proportion as they are cleared;) wolves abounding in every wilderness, and swamps spreading in all directions, to the great injury of the health of the savage inhabitants,—such was Great Britain once.”
“Have swamps any necessary connexion with woods?” I inquired.
“With untended forests, where no care is taken to prevent them. A tree is blown down across a rivulet, and forms a dam. The water, stopped in its course, diffuses itself over the neighbouring ground, and loosens the roots of other trees, and, by becoming stagnant, poisons their vegetation. These other trees fall, one by one, and form other dams; and thus the destruction proceeds, till what was once a forest becomes a bog.”
“This is the reason, then, why trees are found buried in swamps?”
“Certainly; and we know it not only from the fact of trees being so found, but from there being actual instances of such transformations of a forest into a swamp at the present time, in Invernesshire, and some other parts of Scotland. Now, what would a wise landed proprietor do in such a state of the country as this?”
“The very reverse of what you are now doing,” said my father. “He would clear as much ground as possible for cultivation, putting the wood out of the way as fast as it was cut. He would build with it, burn it, and encourage every body about him to use it for all the purposes of life to which it could be applied. He would encourage pasturage, because cattle are scarce in proportion to the scarcity of open ground. These cattle, continually increasing under the care of man, would wander into the woods, and, though they could not injure large timber trees, would prevent the young plants from coming up, and thus prepare for the decline of the forests.”
“If things proceeded in their natural course, the face of the country would be wholly changed in a few centuries,—the hills being bleak and barren, and the vales swampy; the latter having become unfit for the residence of man, and the former an unsheltered and perilous pasture for his flocks. What would a wise landed proprietor do now?”
“He would hang woods on the summits of the hills to protect the herds grazing on their slopes,” replied my father. “He would cut trenches in the valley, and, as an effectual drain, would plant the hollows the first moment that their soil would bear the process. Under this management, the high grounds would become fertile, and the bogs would be converted into firm, rich, vegetable soil, ready to repay the labours of the plough.”
“Then if you owned the downs of our southern counties,” said I, “or the bogs of Ireland, you would plant and drain and plant again?”
“I should, and as much for my own profit as for the general good; for the price of timber rises, of course, in proportion to its scarcity. Now you see how different is the application of labour and capital in these two states of a country. In the one, labour is applied to banish, in the other to create, woods. In the one, cattle are permitted to destroy the young timber; while in the other every tender shoot is protected at an expense of trouble and money. In the one, growing wood is as little valuable a part of the proprietor’s capital as the stones which encumber Mr. Malton’s new fields, and of which he can only make the meanest of his fences; while in the other, it is the resource on which the proprietor mainly relies for the stability of his fortune, not only for the income it brings, but for its power of increasing the productiveness of his pasture and corn lands.”
“And do you believe,” said I, “that there are any so stupid as to oppose a different application of labour and capital in these two cases?”
“Not in so clear an instance,” replied my father; “but they will not follow the precedent in cases very like it. Can you fancy a family of natives, living, some centuries ago, in a wattled hut in a wilderness of Cumberland, visited every winter’s night by wolves, every spring season with agues, crying out in dismay at the proceedings of a rich neighbour to clear the ground? They would exclaim against having their old customs broken in upon, and would talk of the pleasure of gathering acorns for supper in the glades at sunset, and of their hunts, and of the freedom of their wild life. If their neighbour represented to them that acorns had long been becoming scarce from the disappearance of oaks in the swamps; that their children had been swept from their side by diseases belonging to the locality; and that wild beasts were increasing so fast, that there seemed a probability of the hunters soon becoming the hunted, these new notions would only increase their discontent. If he offered to supply them with certain quantities of grain and meat in exchange for wolves’ heads, they would complain of the degradation of obtaining their food by rendering service instead of the dignified independence of picking up acorns or digging roots out of the soil. They would complain that he had injured them by fencing in ground where the boar used to stand at bay; and if he attempted to shew them the impossibility of restoring the forest and the climate and mode of life to what they were a hundred years before, and the necessity of making some provision for their altered state, they would, instead of listening, tax him with all the distresses and inconveniences which had been prepared before he was born.—Now, Lucy, can you find a parallel case to this?”
“Very easily,” replied I, “Mr. Malton is the rich neighbour, and old Williams was one of the lovers of the old paths; and if you had told us of one who retired back farther into the swamp and built his hut on the sinking trunks of the fallen trees, I should have thought you were prophesying of Norton.”
“Let us bode him no ill,” said my father, “but rather hope that he will plant his foot on firm ground, whatever we may think of the position he has chosen.”
“I can scarcely imagine,” said I, “that any would be found to object to the second process Sir Henry described. The shepherd, striving in vain to win his way against the snow storm on the uplands, in search of his perishing flock, would surely bless the hand that planted woods to shelter his charge?”
“Even he,” said my father, “would pluck up every sapling if he dared, for shepherds are well known to grudge every foot of soil on which their flock cannot browze.”
“Observe the fact,” said Sir Henry. “Are not my pheasants lampooned before they are hatched? Is not every larch in all these acres looked upon as a meal taken from a half-starved cow? When the shepherd finds his flock safe under the shelter of a full-grown wood, he will be reconciled to the planter; and not till then: and if any one of my neighbours should live to rest his aged form on his staff in the noonday sun, and watch his grandchildren, among a hundred labourers, felling wood on this spot, he may look on my grave as he creeps homewards, and sigh to think how he once misunderstood my intentions; but I must not expect this justice in my lifetime.”
“You may,” replied my father; “and if you are spared to a good old age, you will witness as total a change in the views of our discontented neighbours as in the aspect of this waste or the condition of our village.”
Sir Henry pointed to the temporary dwellings which had been erected for the troop of labourers who had come from a distance to work under his forester, (there not being an adequate supply of labour at Brooke for the new demand,) and said,—
“When that row of sheds shall have grown into a village, and when the axe and mattock shall be heard in the woods throughout the winter’s day; when the timber-wain shall come jingling down the slope, and the sawyers and woodmen be seen going and returning early and late, my purposes will be answered, whether I live to see their fulfilment or not.”
I often passed an hour with the sergeant in his neat lodging; and if I went only to inquire after his health, or to ask some question which might be answered immediately, I frequently stood chatting till my brothers came to see what I was about. They, however, were generally my companions, for they loved, like other people, to hear the entertaining stories of battles, sieges, and shipwrecks, and the sadder accounts of the suffering and death attendant upon war, which our friend could relate. As he was as regular in his habits as when subject to regimental discipline, we always knew when we should find him at home. At a certain hour he rose and breakfasted; at a certain hour he took down his hat, hung it on a block and brushed it, and put it on sideways with a soldier-like air, and the people at the Arms knew what o’clock it was by the sergeant’s taking his seat under the elm or beside the fire, according as the weather might be. Moving with the sun to the churchyard bench, as regularly as the shade on the dial, he would have been supposed ill or dead if a labourer returning through the stile to his dinner had missed him on a fine day. His landlady whispered to us that he was rather a particular old gentleman, though the most good-natured in the world when not put out of his way; and, indeed, if anything ever did make him look sour, it was his dinner not being ready to a moment. He did not care what was provided for him: he preferred a crust of bread at one o’clock to a goose at two. He could not have told anybody an hour after dinner what he had been eating; but if kept waiting five minutes, he could not recover it till the next morning. His hostess had half a dozen little children, and he was as kind to them as if he had been their grandfather, but warned them of his awful displeasure if they entered his room during his absence. If they came by invitation, well and good; he would do anything to amuse them. He would sing, tell stories, show them pictures, and even play at blind man’s buff; though, as he said, it was not fair play with him as he had only one hand to catch the rogues with. Not a rough word was ever heard from him. I remember one of the little ones saying, “Show me how you will be angry if I meddle with your sword. Will you frown like Bonaparte in the picture?” “No,” said another “he will stamp and speak loud, as he told us his captain did when he was in a passion.” The sergeant snatched up his cane, and made his countenance so fierce in a moment, that the children did not know what to think of him. They stared at him in terror till he could not help laughing; and then, I dare say, resolved in their hearts never to set foot in his parlour without leave.
On the present occasion he exclaimed, as I entered the room with Frederick and Arthur,
“I can guess, Miss Lucy, what you and the young gentlemen are come for, and I am happy to see you. You want to hear the little story I promised you; and you shall be welcome to it.”
“I hope you are not busy?”
“Not at all. You are come just in right time. See, I had finished this chapter of my book, and I was putting the paper in when I heard your step in the passage.”
“I want to know,” said Frederick, who was remarkable for always going straight to the point, “I want to know where you were taken prisoner, and how you got home again, and how long it was ago. Lucy says you are going to tell her all about it, and that we may hear it too.”
“To be sure you may, my dear boys; so sit down in the window-seat, and I will tell you. It was in Spain that I served at that time, you know, against the French. The armies had been drawing nearer to one another for a long while, and we all knew that there must be a terrible battle when they met. From the state of the roads, however, the whole army could not travel together, and when the van of both forces came in sight of each other, the rest were some miles in the rear. Both sides seemed much inclined for a skirmish, and there was pretty sharp fighting for the whole day before the grand battle. Often as I had been in action, I had never been wounded; but on this particular day, I felt a sort of certainty that I should be.”
“Had you never felt this before any other battle?”
“I think not so clearly; but it may only be that what happened made me take particular notice, and remember very well what my feelings had been. I mentioned this foreboding to a friend, however, and so I suppose I was somewhat struck by it.”
“And did he laugh at it, or call you a coward?”
“Neither the one nor the other, master. Very young soldiers, or men of hardened minds, may make light of the disasters of war, and call it cowardice to reflect upon them and prepare one’s mind for them; but my friend was neither giddy nor reckless, and he knew me too well to fancy me a coward. We had fought side by side in many a battle, and I have nursed him when badly wounded; so that we were real friends, and not companions of the camp only. He advised me to ease my mind of all worldly concerns, and to prepare myself in other ways for whatever might happen, as he always did before a battle; so I told him where to find what little money I had, and some letters I had written to my mother and another person——”
“Who was that other person?” interrupted Frederick.
“Never mind who it was,” said I. “You should not ask such a question as that.”
“I have no objection, Miss Lucy, to tell you all. That other person was one to whom I had hoped to be married some time or other; but she was not bound to me, for I told her there was little prospect of my returning home; and if I did, I was afraid I should be very poor; and were getting on in life, and I could not bear the idea of preventing her being happy; so I begged she would not remain single for my sake. I had said this to her a long time before; and my letter on this occasion was to tell her that I still loved her as much as ever; and it was only to be sent in case of my death.—Well: we were very actively engaged all day without my taking any harm, while hundreds were falling round me. Late in the evening, when both parties were tired, and the fire slackened, I passed my friend as we were hastening forward for one other charge, and he called out ‘So you are safe, after all!’ ‘Safe after all,’ I replied, and left him behind. A minute after, a shot struck my right arm while the enemy was pressing round us. I could not defend myself; I was separated from my company, and, of course, taken prisoner.”
“In pain and alone, among foreigners and enemies!” I exclaimed. “How very miserable you must have been!”
“Not so much then as afterwards, Miss Lucy. You, who live in peace and quietness at home, can have no idea of the excitement of spirits there is in battle. One’s heart is so full of courage, one’s mind burns so with indignation at being made prisoner, and one has so much to think about, that there is no time to be truly miserable. I felt no pain from my wound at that time. I did not even know that I was wounded, till I found I could not raise my arm.”
“Is that possible?”
“Very true, my dear, I assure you. I was hurried away, I scarcely know how, to one of the baggage-waggons, with many of the wounded besides: but they were all French; not one friendly face did I see. We were laid, one close upon another, on straw, and jolted away, over bad roads to a town where an hospital was established. Some of my companions were in dreadful pain, and their groans made me sick at heart. I now began to suffer much; but I wished above all things not to be spoken to; so I remained as quiet as if I were dead, and closed my eyes. If I could have shut my ears also, I should have escaped many a horrible dream which has startled me since. Many a night, even now, I hear those groans and oaths; and the tortured countenances I used to see often in a battle rise up before me.—Before daybreak we reached the hospital; and I was really glad of it, though I knew well enough what was before me.”
“Did you feel sure that you must lose your arm?”
“Yes, master; I felt and saw that it was past cure.”
“And werewere you much afraid about it?”
“I had thought so much and so often about the chances of such an accident, that I was not taken by surprise; and I was already in so much pain that I was very willing to suffer more for the sake of being rid of it. I sat beside a fire, while one after another of my companions was taken to the surgeons. At last, after waiting an hour and a half, they were going to carry away the man who lay next beside me; but he was a coward, it seemed, and begged to be left. They had no time to waste, and so laid hold of me, and were going to carry me; but I soon showed them that I had the use of my legs at least, and walked as stoutly as any of them to where the surgeons were. They made quick work of it, and scarcely made a show of asking my leave.”
“But I suppose you would have given them leave?”
“I took care to do that. I held out my arm as soon as ever I saw the instruments.”
“And how did you—how could you bear it?”
“A sturdy spirit will carry one through a great deal, master. I am not sure that I should have borne it so well in England; but I was determined no enemy should wring a complaint out of me. So I was as still as a mouse the whole time; grasping the back of a chair with my other hand so hard that the blood came out at my finger nails. One of the surgeons observed this; and I heard him say that I was a sturdy fellow and fit for a soldier.”soldier.”
“Then the pain was very, very great?”
“Much greater than anybody can fancy who has not felt it, or indeed than anybody can fancy at all; for it is not the sort of thing that can be remembered; and I dare say I have little better notion of it at this moment than you have. But such as it was, it was soon over, and then I walked away to bed. There I paid dear for the effort I had made; and I deserved it, for my bravery was not of the right kind and could not last long.”
“Why, what happened?”
“When I was left alone, weak from pain, and still thrilling in every nerve, a tide of most bitter feelings rushed in upon me. Such a tumult of thoughts I never knew before or since. I hid my face under the bed-clothes, that nobody might disturb me; and there for an hour or two I suffered such agony of mind as I can give you no idea of. My pride gave way, and I felt myself as weak as an infant. In vain I told myself that this misfortune was only what I had expected,—only what every soldier is liable to. In vain I called to mind the boasting in which I had indulged before I left home, and the wish which in my youth I had felt for the glory of one honourable wound. This recollection awakened others which subdued me completely.”
“What were they?”
“It happened that the day before I left this place to join the army, the old clergyman, who lived here then, invited me to the parsonage to say farewell. After talking cheerfully to me about my profession, he went out with me as far as the gate: and there he put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Remember, yours is a dangerous profession in more ways than one. You are not only liable to be sent early to another world, but to depart with false notions of glory in your head, and with pride and hatred in your heart.’ He pointed to the graves and went on, ‘See here what becomes of pride and enmity. There have been some of these whose hearts beat as high with various passions as yours will in your first battle. Now, all are humbled and all are still. So it will be a hundred years hence, with the youngest and the fiercest, with or against whom you are going to fight. They too will be humbled and stilled.’—The recollection of this circumstance now came back upon me clearly. I saw the church with the evening sunshine upon its windows. I saw the light flickering upon the smooth stems of the limes. I saw the graves, and also the venerable countenance and gray hair of my kind friend. I heard his voice and the voices of the children at their play. I could almost smell the flowers in his garden, and feel the pressure of his hand upon my shoulder. I lay weeping for many hours, till by thoughts of home, of my mother, and of other dear friends, my mind was prepared for still better thoughts. My Bible was in my pocket, (for I took care to have it always about me,) and there I found a better sort of courage than that of which I had been so proud.—I was soon glad to take some notice of my companions in the hospital; and we managed to be very cheerful and to converse a good deal, as I told you, Miss Lucy.”
“Did the friend you mentioned before know what had become of you? And what did he do with your money and your letters!”
“As he could learn nothing about me, he supposed that I was a prisoner; and he sent all that I had left behind me to my mother. It was not very long before she heard of me, but she had delivered the other letter I spoke of. I was sorry afterwards that I had ever written it.”
Nobody ventured to ask why; but the sergeant has told me since that the young woman had supposed that, as he was so long absent, he would never return and had therefore married. She received his letter soon after she was settled, and was made very unhappy by it for a little time; but I am pretty sure (though the sergeant did not say any such thing) that she had not a very warm heart; or, at any rate, that it had never been very warm towards him. He came back, he told us, a year or more before his mother’s death, which was a great comfort to them both.
“I think,” said Arthur, “that you must find the world grown very dull now, that there is no war anywhere in Europe. I wonder you are still so fond of the newspapers.”
“Dull, Master Arthur! I wish such a kind of dulness may last for ever. It is all very well for people who want amusement to run about the village with news of a victory, and to help to make a bonfire and light up the houses. But if they happen to have a son or a brother killed or maimed for life, they may learn by experience what it is that thousands and millions are suffering. If they could take but one look at a field of battle, or an army in full retreat, they would wish for no more victories and illuminations. I hope I have as much of the spirit of a soldier in me as any man: and perhaps all the more for having suffered something for my country; but I do say that nations are only half civilized as long as wars are thought necessary. I say, moreover, that they who are foremost in war are farthest from heaven; for heaven is a land of peace.”