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 parishioners; 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 nobody 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.”