Chapter Forty.
Lightsome Days.
Before he returned home in the morning, Hope went to Dr Levitt’s, to report of what he had seen and heard on Mr Grey’s premises in the course of the night. He was persuaded that several persons had been about the yards; and he had seen a light appearing and disappearing among the shrubs which grew thick in the rear of the house. Sydney and he had examined the premises this morning, in company with Mr Grey’s clerk; and they had found the flower-beds trampled, and drops of tallow from a candle which had probably been taken out of a lantern, and ashes from tobacco-pipes, scattered under the lee of a pile of logs. Nothing was missed from the yards: it was probable that they were the resort of persons who had been plundering elsewhere: but the danger from fire was so great, and the unpleasantness of having such night neighbours so extreme, that the gentlemen agreed that no time must be lost in providing a watch, which would keep the premises clear of intruders. The dog, which had by some means been cajoled out of his duty, must be replaced by a more faithful one; and Dr Levitt was disposed to establish a patrol in the village.
The astonishment of both was great when Margaret appeared, early as it was, with her story. It was the faint hope of recovering her ring which brought her thus early to the magistrate’s. Her brother was satisfied to stay and listen, when he found that Hester knew as yet nothing of the matter. It was a clear case that the Greys must find some other guardian for the nights that Mr Grey spent from home; and Dr Levitt said that no man was justified in leaving his family unprotected for a single night in such times as these. He spoke with the deepest concern of the state of the neighbourhood this winter, and of his own inability to preserve security, by his influence either as clergyman or magistrate. The fact was, he said, that neither law nor gospel could deter men from crime, when pressed by want, and hardened against all other claims by those of their starving families. Such times had never been known within his remembrance; and the guardians of the public peace and safety were almost as much at their wits’ end as the sickly and savage population they had to control. He must to-day consult with as many of his brother magistrates as he could reach, as to what could be done for the general security and relief.
As Hope and Margaret returned home to breakfast, they agreed that their little household was more free to discharge the duties of such a time than most of their neighbours of their own rank could possibly be. They had now little or nothing of which they could be robbed. It was difficult to conceive how they could be further injured. They might now, wholly free from fear and self-regards, devote themselves to forgive and serve their neighbours. Such emancipation from care as is the blessing of poverty, even more than of wealth, was theirs; and, as a great blessing in the midst of very tolerable evil, they felt it. Margaret laughed, as she asked Edward if he could spare a few pence to buy horn spoons in the village, as all the silver ones were gone.
Hester was not at all too much alarmed or disturbed, when she missed her watch, and heard what had happened. She was chiefly vexed that she had slept through it all. It seemed so ridiculous that the master of the house should be safe at a distance, and the mistress comfortably asleep, during such an event, leaving it to sister, maid, and guest, to bear all the terror of it!
Dr Levitt’s absence of mind did not interfere with the activity of his heart, or with his penetration in cases where the hearts of others were concerned. He perceived that the lost turquoise was, from some cause, inestimable to Margaret, and he spared no pains to recover it: but weeks passed on without any tidings of it. Margaret told herself that she must give up this, as she had given up so much else, with as much cheerfulness as she could; but she missed her ring every hour of the day.
Christmas came; and the expected contest took, place about the rent of the corner-house. Mr Rowland showed his lady the bank-notes on the morning of quarter-day, and then immediately and secretly sent them back. Mrs Rowland had never been so sorry to see bank-notes; yet she would have been so angry at their being returned, that her husband concealed the fact from her. Within an hour the money was in Mr Rowland’s hands again, with a request that he would desist from pressing favours upon those who could not but consider them as pecuniary obligation, and not as justice. Mr Rowland sighed, turned the key of his desk upon the money, and set forth to the corner-house, to see whether no repairs were wanted—whether there was nothing that he could do as landlord to promote the comfort and security of his excellent tenants.
Christmas came; and Morris found she could not leave her young ladies while the days were so very short. She would receive no wages after Christmas, and she would take care that she cost them next to nothing; but she could not be easy to go till brighter days—days externally brighter, at least—were at hand, nor till the baby was a little less tender, and had shown beyond dispute that he was likely to be a stout little fellow. She could not think of Miss Margaret getting up quite in the dark, to light the fire; it was a dismal time to begin such a new sort of work. Margaret privately explained to her that these little circumstances brought no discouragement to persons who undertake such labour with sufficient motive; and Morris admitted this. She saw the difference between the case of a poor girl first going to service, who trembles half the night at the idea of her mistress’s displeasure if she should not happen to wake in time; such poor girl undertaking service for a maintenance, and by no means from love in either party towards the other—Morris saw the difference between the morning waking to such a service and Margaret’s being called from her bed by love of those whom she was going to serve through the day, and by an exhilarating sense of honour and duty. Morris saw that, while to the solitary dependant every accessory of cheerfulness is necessary to make her willingly leave her rest—the early sunshine through her window, and the morning songs of birds—it mattered little to Margaret under what circumstances she went about her business—whether in darkness or in light, in keen frost or genial warmth. She had the strength of will, in whose glow all the disgust, all the meanness, all the hardship of the most sordid occupations is consumed, leaving unimpaired the dignity and delight of toil. Morris saw and fully admitted all this; and yet she stayed on till the end of January.
By that time her friends were not satisfied to have her remain any longer. It was necessary that she should earn money; and she had an opportunity now of earning what she needed at Birmingham. The time was come when Morris must go.
The family had their sorrow all to themselves that dismal evening; for not a soul in Deerbrook, except Maria, knew that Morris was going at all. Maria had known all along; and it had been settled that Maria should occupy Morris’s room, after it was vacated, as often as she felt nervous and lonely in her lodging. But she was not aware of the precise day when the separation of these old and dear friends was to take place. So they mourned Morris as privately as she had long grieved over their adversity.
Mr Hope meant to drive Morris to Buckley himself, and to see her into the coach for Birmingham; and he had borrowed Mr Grey’s gig for the purpose. He had been urged by Mr Grey not to think of returning that night, had desired his wife and sister not to expect him, and had engaged a neighbour to sleep in the house. The sisters might well look forward to a sad evening; and their hearts were heavy when the gig came to the door, when they were fortifying Morris with a parting glass of wine, and wrapping her up with warm things which were to come back with her master, and expressing their heart-sorrow by the tenderness with which they melted the very soul of poor Morris. She could not speak; she could resist nothing. She took all they offered her to comfort herself with, from having neither heart nor voice to refuse. Morris never gave way to tears; but she was as solemn as if she were going to execution. The baby alone was insensible to her gravity; he laughed in her face when she took him into her arms for the last time;—a seasonable laugh it was, for it relieved his mother of some slight superstitious dread which was stealing upon her, as she witnessed the solemnity of Morris’s farewell to him. They all spoke of her return to them; but no one felt that there was any comfort in so vague a hope, amidst the sadness of the present certainty.
As Hester and Margaret stood out on the steps to watch the gig till the last moment, a few flakes of snow were driven against their faces. They feared Morris would have a dreary journey; and this was not the pleasantest thought to carry with them into the house.
While Hester nursed her infant by the fire, Margaret went round the house, to see what there was for her to do to-night. It moved her to find how thoughtfully everything was done. Busy as Morris had been with a thousand little affairs and preparations, every part of the house was left in the completest order. The very blinds of the chambers were drawn down, and a fire was laid in every grate, in case of its being wanted. The tea-tray was set in the pantry, and not a plate left from dinner unwashed. Margaret felt and said how badly she should supply the place of Morris’s hands, to say nothing of their loss of her head and heart. She sighed her thankfulness to her old friend, that she was already at liberty to sit down beside her sister, with actually nothing on her hands to be done before tea-time.
It was always a holiday to Margaret when she could sit by at leisure, as the morning and evening dressing and undressing of the baby went on. Hester would never entrust the business to her or to any one: but it was the next best thing to watch the pranks of the little fellow, and the play between him and his mother; and then to see the fun subside into drowsiness, and be lost in that exquisite spectacle, the quiet sleep of an infant. When he was this evening laid in his basket, and all was unusually still, from there being no one but themselves in the house, and the snow having by this time fallen thickly outside, Margaret said to her sister—“If I remember rightly, it is just a twelvemonth since you warned me how wretched marriage was. Just a year, is it not?”
“Is it possible?” said Hester, withdrawing her eyes from her infant.
“I wish I could have foreseen then how soon I might remind you of this.”
“Is it possible that I said so?—and of all marriage?”
“Of all love, and all marriage. I remember it distinctly.”
“You have but too much reason to remember it, love. But how thankless, how wicked of me ever to say so.”
“We all, perhaps, say some wretched things which dwell on other people’s minds, long after we have forgotten them ourselves. It is one of the acts we shall waken up to as sins—perhaps every one of us—whenever we become qualified to review our lives dispassionately;—as sins, no doubt, for the pain does not die with the utterance; and to give pain needlessly, and to give lasting pain, is surely a sin. We are none of us guiltless; but I am glad you said this particular thing—dreadful as it was to hear it. It has caused me a great deal of thought within the year; and it now makes us both aware how much happier we are than we were then.”
“We!”
“Yes; all of us. I rather shrink from measuring states of fortune and of mind, as they are at one time against those of another; but it is impossible to recall that warning of yours, and be unaware how differently we have cause to think and speak now. I felt at the time that it was too late for us to complain of love and of marriage. The die was then cast for us all. It is much better to feel now that those complaints were the expression of passing pain, long since over.”
“I rejoice to hear you say this for yourself, Margaret; though I own I should scarcely have expected it. And yet no one is more aware than I that it is a blessing to love—a blessing still, whatever may be the woe that must come with the love. It is a blessing to live for another, to feel far more deeply than the most selfish being on earth ever felt for himself. I know that it is better to have felt this disinterested attachment to another, even in the midst of storms of passion hidden in the heart, and of pangs from disappointment, than to live on in the very best peace of those who have never loved. Yet, knowing this, I have been cowardly for you, Margaret, and at one time sank under my own troubles. Any one who loved as I did should have been braver. I should have been more willing, both for you and for myself, to meet the suffering which belongs to the exercise of all the highest and best part of our nature: but I was unworthy then of the benignant discipline appointed to me: and at the moment, I doubt not I should have preferred, if the choice had been offered to me, the safety and quiet of a passionless existence to the glorious exercise which has been graciously appointed me against my will. I do try now, Margaret, to be thankful that you have had some of this exercise and discipline; but I have not faith enough. My thanks are all up in grief before I have done—grief that you have the struggle and the sorrow, without the support and the full return which have been granted to me.”
“You need not grieve much for me. I have not only had the full return you speak of, but I have it still. It cannot be spoken, or written, or even indulged; but I know it exists; and therefore am I happier than I was last year. How foolish it is,” she continued, as if thinking aloud, “how perfectly childish to set our hearts on what we call happiness,—on any arrangement of circumstances, either in our minds or our fortunes—so little as we know! How you and I should have dreaded this night and to-morrow, if they could have been foreshown to us a while ago! How we should have shrunk from sitting down under the cloud of sorrow which appears to have settled upon this house! And now this evening has come—”
“The evening of Morris’s going away, and everything else so dreary! No servant, no money, no prospect! Careful economy at home, ill-will abroad; the times bad, the future all blank—we two sitting here alone, with the snow falling without!”
“And our hearts aching with parting with Morris (we must come back to that principal grief). How dismal all this would have looked, if we could have seen it in a fairy-glass at Birmingham long ago!—and yet I would not change this very evening for any we ever spent in Birmingham, when we were exceedingly proud of being very happy.”
“Nor I. This is life: and to live—to live with the whole soul, and mind, and strength, is enough. It is not often that I have strength to feel this, and courage to say it; but to-night I have both.”
“And in time we may be strong enough to pray that this child may truly and wholly live—may live in every capacity of his being, whatever suffering may be the condition of such life: but it requires some courage to pray so for him, he looks so unfit for anything but ease at present!”
“For anything but feeding and sleeping, and laughing in our faces. Did you ever see an infant sleep so softly? Are not those wheels passing? Yes; surely I heard wheels rolling over the snow.”
She was right. In five minutes more, Margaret had to open the door to her brother.
Hope had arrived at Blickley only just in time to drive Morris up to the door of the Birmingham coach, and put her in as the guard was blowing his horn. Mr Grey’s horse had gone badly, and they had been full late in setting off. He had not liked the prospect of staying where he was till morning, and had resolved to bid defiance to footpads, and return: so he stepped into the coffee-room, and read the papers while the horse was feeding, and came home as quickly after as he could. As he was safe, all the three were glad he had done so; and the more that, for once, Edward seemed sad. They made a bright fire, and gave him tea; but their household offices did not seem to cheer him as usual. Hester asked, at length, whether he had heard any bad news.
“Only public news. The papers are full of everything that is dismal. The epidemic is spreading frightfully. It is a most serious affair. The people you meet in the streets at Blickley look as if they had the plague raging in the town. They say the funerals have never ceased passing through the streets, all this week; and really the churchyard I saw seemed full of new graves. I believe the case is little better in any town in the kingdom.”
“And in the villages?”
“The villages follow, of course, with differences according to their circumstances. None will be worse than this place, when once the fever appears among us. I would not say so anywhere but by our own fireside, because everything should be done to encourage the people instead of frightening them; but indeed it is difficult to imagine a place better prepared for destruction than our pretty village is just now, from the extreme poverty of most of the people, and their ignorance, which renders them unfit to take any rational care of themselves.”
“You say, ‘whenever the fever comes.’ Do you think it must certainly come?”
“Yes: and I have had some suspicions, within a day or two, that it is here already. I must see Walcot to-morrow; and learn what he has discovered in his practice.”
“Mr Walcot! Will not Dr Levitt do as well?”
“I must see Dr Levitt too, to consult about some means of cleansing and drying the worst of the houses in the village. But it is quite necessary that I should have some conversation with Walcot about the methods of treatment of this dreadful disease. If he is not glad of an opportunity of consulting with a brother in the profession, he ought to be—and I have no doubt he will be; for he will very soon have as much upon him as any head and hands in the world could manage.”
“Cannot you let him come to you for advice and assistance when he wants it?”
“I must not wait for that. He is young, and, as we all imagine, not over wise: and a dozen of our poor neighbours might die before he became aware of as much as I know to-night about this epidemic. No, love; my dignity must give way to the safety of our neighbours. Depend upon it, Walcot will be glad enough to hear what I have to say—if not to-morrow, by next week at furthest.”
“So soon? What makes you say next week?”
“I judge partly from the rate of progress of the fever elsewhere, and partly from the present state of health in Deerbrook. There are other reasons too. I have seen some birds of ill omen on the wing hitherward this evening.”
“What can you mean?”
“I mean fortune-tellers. Are you not aware that in seasons of plague—of the epidemics of our times, as well as the plagues of former days—conjurors, and fortune-tellers, and quacks appear, as a sort of heralds of the disease? They are not really so, for the disease in fact precedes them; but they show themselves so immediately on its arrival, and usually before its presence is acknowledged, that they have often been thought to bring it. They have early information of its existence in any place; and they come to take advantage of the first panic of the inhabitants, where there are enough who are ignorant to make the speculation a good one. I saw two parties of these people trooping hither; and we shall have heard something of their prophecies, and of a fever case or two, before this time to-morrow, I have little doubt.”
“It is this prospect which has made you sad,” said Hester.
“No, my dear—not that alone. But do not let us talk about being sad. What does it matter?”
“Yes; do let us talk about it,” said Margaret, “if, as I suspect, you are sad for us. It is about Morris’s going away, is it not?”
“About many things. It is impossible to be at all times unaffected by such changes as have come upon us; I cannot always forget what my profession once was to me, for honour, for occupation, and for income. I confidently reckoned on bringing you both to a home full of comfort. Never were women so cherished as I meant that you should be. And now it has ended in your little incomes being almost our only resource, and in your being deprived of your old friend Morris, some years before her time. I can hardly endure to think of to-morrow.”
“And do you really call this the end?” asked Margaret. “Do you consider our destiny fixed for evermore?”
“As far as you and I are concerned, love,” said Hester to him, “I could almost wish that this were the end. I feel as if almost any change would be for the worse; I mean supposing you not to look as you do now, but as you have always been till now. Oh, Edward, I am so happy!”
Her husband could not speak for astonishment and delight. “You remember that evening in Verdon woods, Edward—the evening before we were married?”
“Remember it!”
“Well. How infinitely happier are we now than then! Oh! that fear—that mistrust of myself! You reproved me for my fear and mistrust then; and I must beg leave to remind you of what you then said. It is not often that I can have the honour of preaching to you, my dear husband, as it is rather difficult to find an occasion; but now I have caught you tripping. What is there for you to be uneasy about now, that can at all be compared with what I troubled myself about then?—Since that time I have caused you much misery, I know—misery which I partly foresaw I should cause you: but that is over, I trust. It is over at least for the time that we are poor and persecuted. I dare not and do not wish for anything otherwise than as we have it flow. Persecution seems to have made us wiser, and poverty happier; and how, if only Margaret were altogether as we would see her, how could we be better than we are?”
“You are right, my dear wife.” These few tender words, and her husband’s brightened looks, sufficed—Hester had no cares. She forgot even the fever, in seeing Edward look as gay as usual again, and in feeling that she was everything to that feeling, that conviction, for which she had sighed in vain, for long after her marriage. She had then fancied that his profession, his family, his own thoughts, were as important to him as herself. She now knew that she was supreme; and this was supreme satisfaction.
When Margaret sprang up to her new labours in the chill dusk of the next morning, she flattered herself that she was the first awake; but it was not so. When she went down, she found her brother busy shovelling the snow away, and making a clear path from the kitchen door to the coal-house. He declared it delightfully warm work, by the time he had brought in coals enough for the day, and wanted more employment of the same sort. He went round to the front of the house, and cleared the steps and pavement there; caring nothing for the fact, that two or three neighbours gazed from their doors, and that some children stood blowing upon their fingers, and stamping with their feet, enduring the cold, for the sake of seeing the gentleman clearing his own steps.
“What would the Greys say?” asked Margaret, laughing; as, duster in hand, she looked from the open window, and spoke to her brother outside.
“I am sure they ought to say I have done my work well.”
“That is just what Hester is observing within here. You are almost ready for breakfast, are you not? She is setting the table.”
“Quite ready. What warm work this is! Really I do not believe there is such a bit of pavement in all Deerbrook as this of ours.”
“Come—come in to breakfast. You have admired your work quite enough for this morning.”
The three who sat down to breakfast were as reasonable and philosophical as most people; but even they were taken by surprise with the sweetness of comforts provided by their own immediate toil. There was something in the novelty, perhaps; but Hope threw on the fire with remarkable energy the coals he had himself brought in from the coal-house, and ate with great relish the toast toasted by his wife’s own hands. Margaret, too, looked round the room more than once, with a new sort of pride in there being not a particle of dust on table, chair, or book. It was scarcely possible to persuade Edward that there was nothing more for him to do about the house till the next morning; that the errand-boy would come in an hour, and clean the shoes; and that the only assistance the master of the house could render, would be to take charge of the baby for a quarter of an hour, while Hester helped her sister to make the beds.
After breakfast, when Hester was dressing her infant, and Margaret washing up the tea-cups and saucers, the postman’s knock was heard. Margaret went to the door, and paid for the letter from the “emergency purse,” as they called the little sum of money they had put aside for unforeseen expenses. The letter was for Edward, and so brief that it must be on business.
It was on business. It was from the lawyer of Mr Hope’s aged grandfather; and it told that the old gentleman had at last sunk rather suddenly under his many infirmities. Mr Hope was invited to go—not to the funeral, for it must be over before he could arrive, but to see the will, in which he had a large beneficial interest, the property being divided between himself and his brother, subject to legacies of one hundred pounds to each of his sisters, and a few smaller bequests to the servants.
“This is as you always feared,” said Hester to her husband, observing the expression of concern in his face, on reading the letter.
“Indeed, I always feared it would be so,” he replied. “I did what I could to prevent this act of posthumous injustice; and I am grieved that I failed; for nothing can repair it. My sisters will have their money—the same in amount, but how different in value! They will receive it as a gift from their brothers, instead of as their due from their grandfather. I am very sorry his last act was of this character.”
“Will you go? Must you go?”
“No, I shall not go—at least, not at present. The funeral would be over, you see, before I could get there; and I doubt not the rest of the business may be managed quietly and easily by letter. I have no inclination to travel just now, and no money to do it with, and strong reasons of another kind for staying at home. No, I shall not go.”
“I am very glad. Now, the first duty is to write to Emily and Anne, I suppose: and to Frank?”
“Not to Frank just yet. He knows what I meant to do, in case of my grandfather recurring to this disposition of his property; and, further than this, I must not influence Frank. He must be left entirely free to do as he thinks proper, and I shall not communicate with him till he has had ample time to decide on his course. I shall write to Emily and Anne to-day.”
“I am sorry for them.”
“So am I. What a pity it is, when the aged, whom one would wish to honour after they are gone to their graves, impair one’s respect, by an unjust arrangement of their affairs! How easily might my grandfather have satisfied us all, and secured our due reverence at the last, by merely being just! Now, after admitting what was just, he has gone back into his prejudices, and placed us all in a painful position, from which it will be difficult to every one of us to regard his memory as we should wish.”
“He little thought you would look upon his rich legacy in this way,” said Margaret, smiling.
“I gave him warning that I should. It was impossible to refuse it more peremptorily than I did.”
“That must be your satisfaction now, love. You have done everything that was right; so we will not discompose ourselves because another has done a wrong which you can partly repair.”
“My dear wife, what comfort you give! What a blessing it is, that you think, and feel, and will act, with me—making my duty easy instead of difficult!”
“I was going to ask,” observed Margaret, “whether you have no misgiving—no doubt whatever that you are right in refusing all this money.”
“Not the slightest doubt, Margaret. The case is not in any degree altered by my change of fortune. The facts remain, that my sisters have received nothing yet from the property, while I have had my professional education out of it. That my profession does not at present supply us with bread does not affect the question at all: nor can you think that it does, I am sure. But Hester, my love, what think you of our prospect of a hundred pounds?”
“A hundred pounds!”
“Yes; that is the sum set down for me when the honest will was made; and that sum I shall of course retain.”
“Oh, delightful! What a quantity of comfort we may get out of a hundred pounds! How rich we shall be!”
“She is thinking already,” said Margaret, “what sort of a pretty cloak baby is to have for the summer.”
“And Margaret must have something out of it, must not she, love?” asked Hester.
“We will all enjoy it, with many thanks to my poor grandfather. Surely this hundred pounds will set us on through the year.”
“That will be very pleasant, really,” observed Margaret. “To be sure of bread for all the rest of the year! Oh, the value of a hundred pounds to some people!”
“What a pity that Morris did not stay this one other day!” exclaimed Hester. “And yet, perhaps, not so. It might have perplexed her mind about leaving us, and induced her to give up her new place; and there is nothing in a chance hundred pounds to justify that. It is better as it is.”
“All things are very well as they are,” said Hope, “as long as we think so. Now, I am going to call on Walcot. Good-bye.”
“Stop, stop one moment! Stay, and see what I have found!” cried his wife, in a tone of glee. “Look! Feel! Tell me—is not this our boy’s first tooth?”
“It is—it certainly is. I give you joy, my little fellow!”
“Worth all the hundreds of pounds in the world,” observed Margaret, coming in her turn to see and feel the little pearly edge, whose value its owner was far from appreciating, while worried with the inquisition which was made into the mysteries of his mouth. “Now it is a pity that Morris is not here!” all exclaimed.
“We must write to her. Perhaps we might have found it yesterday, if we had had any idea it would come so soon.”
No: Hester was quite positive there was no tooth to be seen or felt last night.
“Well, we must write to Morris.”
“You must leave me a corner,” said Hope. “We must all try our skill in describing a first tooth. I will consider my part as I walk. Bite my finger once more before I go, my boy.”
The sisters busied themselves in putting the parlour in order, for the reception of any visitors who might chance to call, though the streets were so deep in snow as to render the chance a remote one. Margaret believed that, when the time should come, she might set the potatoes over the parlour fire to boil, and thus, without detection, save the lighting another fire. But before she had taken off her apron, while she was in the act of sweeping up the hearth, there was a loud knock, which she recognised as proceeding from the hand of a Grey. The family resemblance extended to their knocks at the door.
As if no snow had fallen, Mrs Grey and Sophia entered.
“You are surprised to see us, my dears, I have no doubt. But I could not be satisfied without knowing what Mr Hope thinks of this epidemic, this terrible fever, which every one is speaking about so frightfully.”
“Why, what can he think?”
“I mean, my dear, does he suppose that it will come here? Are we likely to have it?”
“He tells us, what I suppose you hear from Mr Grey, that the fever seems to be spreading everywhere, and is just now very destructive at Buckley. Does not Mr Grey tell you so?”
“No, indeed; there is no learning anything from Mr Grey that he does not like to tell. Sophia, I think we must take in a newspaper again, that we may stand a chance of knowing something.”
Sophia agreed.
“Sophia and I found that we really had no time to read the newspaper. There it lay, and nobody touched it; for Mr Grey reads the news in the office always. I told Mr Grey it was just paying so much a-week for no good to anybody, and I begged he would countermand the paper. But we must take it in again, really, to know how this fever goes on. Does Mr Hope think, my dears, as many people are saying here this morning, that it is a sort of plague?”
“Oh, mamma,” exclaimed Sophia, “how can you say anything so dreadful?”
“I have not heard my husband speak of it so,” said Hester. “He thinks it a very serious affair, happening as it does in the midst of a scarcity, when the poor are already depressed and sickly.”
“Ah! that is always the way, Mr Grey tells me. After a scarcity comes the fever, he says. The poor are much to be pitied indeed. But what should those do who are not poor, have you heard Mr Hope say?”
“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.”