“Not a pin,” said Fanny, with admirable frankness.
“Well, but,” said Rhoda, naively, “I can't bear Miss Vizard to be angry with me; I admire her so. Please let me explain. Islip is no paradise—quite the reverse; but the faults of Islip are not your faults. The children are ignorant; but you pay for a school. The people are poor from insufficient wages; but you are not paymaster. Your gardeners, your hinds, and all your outdoor people have enough. You give them houses. You let cottages and gardens to the rest at half their value; and very often they don't pay that, but make excuses; and you accept them, though they are all stories; for they can pay everybody but you, and their one good bargain is with you. Miss Vizard has carried a basket all her life with things from your table for the poor.”
Miss Vizard blushed crimson at this sudden revelation.
“If a man or a woman has served your house long, there's a pension for life. You are easy, kind, and charitable. It is the faults of others I ask you to cure, because you have such power. Now, for instance, if the boys at Hillstoke are putty-faced, the boys at Islip have no calves to their legs. That is a sure sign of deteriorating species. The lower type of savage has next to no calf. The calf is a sign of civilization and due nourishment. This single phenomenon was my clew, and led me to others; and I have examined the mothers and the people of all ages, and I tell you it is a village of starvelings. Here a child begins life a starveling, and ends as he began. The nursing mother has not food enough for one, far less for two. The man's wages are insufficient, and the diet is not only insufficient, but injudicious. The race has declined. There are only five really big, strong men—Josh Grace, Will Hudson, David Wilder, Absalom Green, and Jack Greenaway; and they are all over fifty—men of another generation. I have questioned these men how they were bred, and they all say milk was common when they were boys. Many poor people kept a cow; squire doled it; the farmers gave it or sold it cheap; but nowadays it is scarcely to be had. Now, that is not your fault, but you are the man who can mend it. New milk is meat and drink especially to young and growing people. You have a large meadow at the back of the village. If you could be persuaded to start four or five cows, and let somebody sell the new milk to the poor at cost price—say, five farthings the quart. You must not give it, or they will water their muckheaps with it. With those cows alone you will get rid, in the next generation, of the half-grown, slouching men, the hollow-eyed, narrow-chested, round-backed women, and the calfless boys one sees all over Islip, and restore the stalwart race that filled the little village under your sires and have left proofs of their wholesome food on the tombstones: for I have read every inscription, and far more people reached eighty-five between 1750 and 1800 than between 1820 and 1870. Ah, how I envy you to be able to do such great things so easily! Water to poisoned Hillstoke with one hand; milk to starved Islip with the other. This is to be indeed a king!”
The enthusiast rose from the table in her excitement, and her face was transfigured; she looked beautiful for the moment.
“I'll do it,” shouted Vizard; “and you are a trump.”
Miss Gale sat down, and the color left her cheek entirely.
Fanny Dover, who had a very quick eye for passing events, cried out, “Oh dear! she is going to faint now.” The tone implied, what a plague she is!
Thereupon Severne rushed to her, and was going to sprinkle her face; but she faltered, “No! no! a glass of wine.” He gave her one with all the hurry and empressement in the world. She fixed him with a strange look as she took it from him: she sipped it; one tear ran into it. She said she had excited herself; but she was all right now. Elastic Rhoda!
“I am very glad of it,” said Vizard. “You are quite strong enough without fainting. For Heaven's sake, don't add woman's weakness to your artillery, or you will be irresistible; and I shall have to divide Vizard Court among the villagers. At present I get off cheap, and Science on the Rampage: let me see—only a granary, a well, and six cows.”