Deerbrook Part 73

"He thinks they should help their poor neighbours to the very utmost."

"Oh, yes; of course: but what I mean is, what precautions would be advise?"

"We will ask him. I have not heard him speak particularly of this on the present occasion."

"Then he has not established any regulations in his own family?"

"No. But I know his opinion on such cases in general to be, that the safest way is to go on as usual, taking rational care of health, and avoiding all unnecessary terror. This common way of living, and a particularly diligent care of those who want the good offices of the rich, are what he would recommend, I believe, at this time: but when he comes in, we will ask him. You had better stay till he returns. He may bring some news. Meantime, I am sorry my baby is asleep. I should like to show you his first tooth."

"His first tooth? Indeed! He is a forward little fellow. But, Hester, do you happen to have heard your husband say what sort of fumigation he would recommend in case of such a fever as this showing itself in the house?"

"Indeed I have not heard him speak of fumigations at all. Have you, Margaret?"

"I should just like to know; for Mrs Jones told me of a very good one; and Mrs Howell thinks ill of it. Mrs Jones recommended me to pour some sulphuric acid upon salt--common salt--in a saucer; but Mrs Howell says there is nothing half so good as hot vinegar."

"Somebody has come and put up a stall," said Sophia, "where he sells fumigating powders, and some pills, which he says are an infallible remedy against the fever."

"Preventive, my dear."

"Well, mamma, 'tis just the same thing. Does Mr Hope know anything of the people who have set up that stall?"

Hester thought she might venture to answer that question without waiting for her husband's return. She laughed as she said, that medical men avoided acquaintance with quacks.

"Does Mr Hope think that medical men are in any particular danger?"

asked Sophia, bashfully, but with great anxiety. "I think they must be, going among so many people who are ill. If there is a whole family in the fever in a cottage at Crossly End, as Mrs Howell says there is, how very dangerous it must be to attend them!"

Sophia was checked by a wink from her mother, and then first remembered that she was speaking to a surgeon's wife. She tried to explain away what she had said; but there was no need. Hester calmly remarked that it was the duty of many to expose themselves at such times in an equal degree with the medical men; and that she believed that few were more secure than those who did so without selfish thoughts and ignorant panic. Sophia believed that every one did not think so. Some of Mr Walcot's friends had been remonstrating with him about going so much among the poor sick people, just at this time; and Mr Walcot had been consulting her as to whether his duty to his parents did not require that he should have some regard to his own safety. He had not known what to do about going to a house in Turnstile-lane, where some people were ill.

A dead silence followed this explanation. Mrs Grey broke it by asking Margaret if she might speak plainly to her--the common preface to a lecture. As usual, Margaret replied, "Oh! certainly."

"I would only just hint, my dear, that it would be as well if you did not open the door yourself. You cannot think how strangely it looks: and some very unpleasant remarks might be made upon it. It is of no consequence such a thing happening when Sophia and I come to your door.

I would not have you think we regard it for ourselves in the least--the not being properly shown in by a servant."

"Oh! not in the least," protested Sophia.

"But you know it might have been the Levitts. I suppose it would have been just the same if the Levitts had called?"

"It certainly would."

"It might have been the Levitts certainly," observed Hester: "but I must just explain that it was to oblige me that Margaret went to the door."

"Then, my dear, I hope you will point out some other way in which Margaret may oblige you; for really you have no idea how oddly it looks for young ladies to answer knocks at the door. It is not proper self-respect, proper regard to appearance. And was it to oblige you that Margaret carried a basket all through Deerbrook on Wednesday, with the small end of a carrot peeping out from under the lid? Fie, my dears! I must say fie! It grieves me to find fault with you: but really this is folly. It is really neglecting appearances too far."

Mr Hope did not return in time to see Mrs Grey. When she could wait no longer, Hester promised to send her husband to solve Mrs Grey's difficulties.

"What would she have said," exclaimed Hester, "if she had seen my husband's doings of this morning?"

"Ah! what indeed?"

"Actually shovelling snow from his own steps!"

"Oh, I thought you meant giving away a competence. Which act would she have thought the least self-respectful?"

"She would have had a great deal to say on his duty to his family in both cases. But it is all out of kindness that she grieves so much over his 'enthusiasm,' and lectures us for our disregard of appearances. If she loved us less, we should hear less of her concern, and it would be told to others behind our backs. So we will not mind it. You do not mind it, Margaret?"

"I rather enjoy it."

"That is right. Now I wish my husband would come in. He has been gone very long; and I want to hear the whole truth about this fever."

CHAPTER FORTY ONE.

DEERBROOK IN SHADOW.

It was some hours before Hope appeared at home again; and when he did, he was very grave. Mr Walcot had been truly glad to see him, and, it was plain, would have applied to him for aid and co-operation some days before, if Mrs Rowland had not interfered, to prevent any consultation of the kind. The state of health of Deerbrook was bad,--much worse than Hope had had any suspicion of. Whole families were prostrated by the fever in the labourers' cottages, and it was creeping into the better sort of houses. Mr Walcot had requested Hope to visit some of his patients with him: and what he had seen had convinced him that the disease was of a most formidable character, and that a great mortality must be expected in Deerbrook. Walcot appeared to be doing his duty with more energy than might have been expected: and it seemed as if whatever talent he had, was exercised in his profession. Hope's opinion of him was raised by what he had seen this morning. Walcot had complained that his skill and knowledge could have no fair play among a set of people so ignorant as the families of his Deerbrook patients.

They put more faith in charms than in medicines or care; and were running out in the cold and damp to have their fortunes told by night, or in the grey of the morning. If a fortune-teller promised long life, all the warnings of the doctor went for nothing. Then, again, the people mistook the oppression which was one of the first symptoms of the fever, for debility; and before the doctor was sent for, or in defiance of his directions, the patient was plied with strong drinks, and his case rendered desperate from the beginning. Mr Walcot had complained that the odds were really too much against him, and that he believed himself likely to lose almost every fever patient he had. It may be imagined how welcome to him were Mr Hope's countenance, suggestions, and influence,--such as the prejudices of the people had left it.

Dr Levitt's influence was of little more avail than Mr Hope's. From this day, he was as busily engaged among the sick as the medical gentlemen themselves; laying aside his books, and spending all his time among his paris.h.i.+oners; not neglecting the rich, but especially devoting himself to the poor. He co-operated with Hope in every way; raising money to cleanse, air, and dry the most cheerless of the cottages, and to supply the indigent sick with warmth and food. But all appeared to be of little avail. The disease stole on through the village, as if it had been left to work its own way; from day to day tidings came abroad of another and another who was down in the fever,--the Tuckers'

maidservant, Mr Hill's shop-boy, poor Mrs Paxton, always sure to be ill when anybody else was, and all John Ringworth's five children. In a fortnight, the church bell began to give token how fatal the sickness was becoming. It tolled till those who lived very near the church were weary of hearing it.

On the afternoon of a day when its sound had scarcely ceased since sunrise, Dr Levitt and Hope met at the door of the corner-house.

"You are the man I wanted to meet," said Dr Levitt. "I have been inquiring for you, but your household could give me no account of you.

Could you just step home with me? Or come to me in the evening, will you? But stay! There is no time like the present, after all; so, if you will allow me, I will walk in with you now; and, if you are going to dinner, I will make one. I have n.o.body to sit down with me at home at present, you know,--or perhaps you do not know."

"Indeed I was not aware of the absence of your family," said Hope, leading the way into the parlour, where Margaret at the moment was laying the cloth.

"You must have wondered that you had seen nothing of my wife all this week, if you did not know where she was. I thought it best, all things considered, to send them every one away. I hope we have done right. I find I am more free for the discharge of my own duty, now that I am unchecked by their fears for me, and untroubled by my own anxiety for them. I have sent them all abroad, and shall go for them when this epidemic has run its course; and not till then. I little thought what satisfaction I could feel in walking about my own house, to see how deserted it looks. I never hear that bell but I rejoice that all that belong to me are so far off."

"I wanted to ask you about that bell," said Hope. "My question may seem to you to savour strongly of dissent; but I must inquire whether it is absolutely necessary for bad news to be announced to all Deerbrook every day, and almost all day long. However far we may be from objecting to hear it in ordinary times, should not our first consideration now be for the living? Is not the case altered by the number of deaths that takes place at a season like this?"

"I am quite of your opinion, Mr Hope; and I have talked with Owen, and many others, about that matter, within this week. I have proposed to dispense, for the present, with a custom which I own myself to be attached to in ordinary times, but which I now see may be pernicious.

But it cannot be done. We must yield the point."

"I will not engage to cure any sick, or to keep any well, who live within sound of that bell."

"I am not surprised to hear you say so. But this practice has so become a part of people's religion, that it seems as if worse effects would follow from discontinuing it than from pursuing the usual course. Owen says there is scarcely a person in Deerbrook who would not talk of a heathen death and burial if the bell were silenced; and, if once the people's repose in their religion is shaken, I really know not what will become of them."

"I agree with you there. Their religious feelings must be left untouched, or all is over; but I am sorry that this particular observance is implicated with them so completely as you say. It will be well if it does not soon become an impossibility to toll the bell for all who die."

"It would be well, too," said Dr Levitt, "if this were the only superst.i.tion the people entertained. They are more terrified with some others than with this bell. I am afraid they are more depressed by their superst.i.tions than sustained by their religion. Have you observed, Hope, how many of them stand looking at the sky every night?"

"Yes; and we hear, wherever we go, of fiery swords, and dreadful angels, seen in the clouds; and the old prophecies have all come up again--at least, all of them that are dismal. As for the death-watches, they are out of number; and there is never a fire lighted but a coffin flies out."

"And this story of a ghost of a coffin, with four ghosts to bear it, that goes up and down in the village all night long," said Hester, "I really do not wonder that it shakes the nerves of the sick to hear of it. They say that no one can stop those bearers, or get any answer from them: but on they glide, let what will be in their way."

"Come, tell me," said Dr Levitt, "have not you yourself looked out for that sight?"