SANITARY INSPECTORS.—THE PESTILENCE.—THE PARSON.—THE DOCTOR.—THE SQUIRE
AND THE SCHOOLMASTER.—DESOLATION AT THE WINDMILL.—THE SECOND ADVENT.
I REMEMBER a “cholera year” in a certain big village. The activity of
the sanitary authorities (and many and vain had been the efforts to rouse
them to activity _before_) was, for them, remarkable. A good many heads
of households died with fearful suddenness and not less fearful
suffering. Several nuisances were “seen to,” some tar-barrels were
burnt, and the scourge passed by. Not long ago a woman, whose home is in
a court where some of the most flagrant nuisances existed, in talking to
me, casually alluded to one of them. It had been ordered to be removed,
she said, in the cholera year when the gentlemen were going round; but
the cholera went away, and it remained among those things which were
_not_ “seen to,” and for aught I know flourishes still. She was a
sensible and affectionate person. Living away from her home at that
time, she became anxious at once for the welfare of her relatives if they
neglected to write to her. But she had never an anxiety on the subject
of that unremedied abomination which was poisoning every breath they
drew. That “the gentlemen who went round” felt it superfluous to have
their orders carried out when strong men were no longer sickening and
dying within two revolutions of the hands of the church clock will
surprise no one who has had to do with local sanitary officers. They are
like the children of Israel, and will only do their duty under the
pressure of a plague. The people themselves are more like the Egyptians.
Plagues won’t convince them. A mother with all her own and her
neighbors’ children sickening about her would walk miles in a burst shoe
to fetch the doctor or a big bottle of medicine, but she won’t walk three
yards farther than usual to draw her house-water from the well that the
sewer doesn’t leak into. That is a fact, not a fable; and, in the cases
I am thinking of, all medical remonstrance was vain. Uneducated people
will take any thing in from the doctor through their mouths, but little
or nothing through their ears.
When such is the state of matters in busy, stirring districts, among
shrewd artisans, and when our great seat of learning smells as it does
smell under the noses of the professors, it is needless to say that the
“black fever” found every household in the little village prepared to
contribute to its support, and met with hardly an obstacle on its
devastating path.
To comment on Master Salter’s qualifications for the post of sanitary
inspector would be to insult the reader’s understanding. Of course he
owned several of the picturesque little cottages where the refuse had to
be pitched out at the back, and the slops chucked out in front, and where
the general arrangements for health, comfort, and decency were such as
one must forbear to speak of, since, on such matters, our ears—Heaven
help us!—have all that delicacy which seems denied to our noses.
If the causes of the calamity were little understood, portents were
plentifully noted. The previous winter had been mild. A thunderbolt
fell in the autumn. There was a blight on the gooseberries, and Master
Salter had a calf with two heads. As to the painter, a screech-owl had
been heard to cry from his chimney-top, not three weeks before his death.
There was a pause of a day or so after Master Linseed died, and then
victims fell thick and fast. Children playing happily with their mimic
boats on the open drain that ran lazily under the noontide sun, by the
footpath of the main street, were coffined for their hasty burial before
the sun had next reached his meridian. The tears were hardly dry in
their parents’ eyes before these also were closed in their last sleep.
The very aged seemed to linger on, but strong men sickened and died; and
at the end of the week more than one woman was left sitting by an empty
hearth, a worn-out creature whom Death seemed only to have forgotten to
take away.
At first there was a reckless disregard of infection among the neighbors.
But, after one or two of these family desolations, this was succeeded by
a panic, and even the noble charity which the poor commonly show to each
other’s troubles failed, and no one could be got to nurse the sick or
bury the dead.
Now the Rector was an old man. Most of the parish officers were aged,
and patriarchs in white smock frocks were as plentiful as creepers at the
cottage doors. The healthy breezes and the dull pace at which life
passed in the district seemed to make men slow to wear out. If the
Rector had profited by these features of the parish in health, it must be
confessed that they had also had their influence on his career. He was a
good man, and a learned one. He stuck close to his living, and he was
benevolent. But he was not of those heroic natures who can resist the
influence of the mental atmosphere around them; and in a dull parish, in
a sleepy age, he had not been an active parson. Some men, however, who
cannot make opportunities for themselves, can do nobly enough if the
chance comes to them; and this chance came to the Rector in his
sixty-ninth year, on the wings of the black fever. To quicken spiritual
life in the soul of a Master Salter he had not the courage even to
attempt; but a panic of physical cowardice had not a temptation for him.
And so it came about that of four men who stayed the panic, by the
example of their own courage, who went from house to house, and from
sick-bed to sick-bed—who drew a cordon round the parish, and established
kitchens and a temporary hospital, and nursed the sick, and encouraged
the living, and buried the dead,—the most active was the old Rector.
The other three were the parish doctor, Squire Ammaby, and the
schoolmaster.
On the very first rumor of the epidemic, Lady Louisa had carried off
Amabel, and had gone with Lady Craikshaw to Brighton. Both the ladies
were indignant with the Squire’s obstinate resolve to remain amongst his
tenants. In her alarm, Lady Louisa implored him to sell the property and
buy one in Ireland, which was Lady Craikshaw’s native country; and the
list she contrived to run up of the drawbacks to the Ammaby estate would
have driven a temper less stolid than her husband’s to distraction.
When the fever broke out among the children, the schools were closed, and
Master Swift devoted his whole time to laboring with the parson, the
doctor, and the Squire.
No part of the Rector’s devotion won more affectionate gratitude from his
people than a single act of thoughtfulness, by which he preserved a
record of the graves of their dead. He had held firmly on to a decent
and reverent burial, and, foreseeing that the poor survivors would be
quite unable to afford gravestones, he kept a strict list of the dead,
and where they were buried, which was afterwards transferred to one large
monument, which was bought by subscription. He cut the village off from
all communication with the outer world, to prevent a spread of the
disease; but he sent accounts of the calamity to the public papers, which
brought abundant help in money for the needs of the parish. And in these
matters the schoolmaster was his right-hand man.
The disease was most eccentric in its path. Having scourged one side
only of the main street, it burst out with virulence in detached houses
at a distance. Then it returned to the village, and after lulls and
outbreaks it ceased as suddenly as it began.
It was about midway in its career that it fell with all its wrath upon
Master Lake’s windmill.
The mill stood in a healthy position, but the dwelling room was
ill-ventilated, and there were defective sanitary arrangements, which
Master Swift had anxiously pointed out to the miller. The plague had
begun in the village, and the schoolmaster trembled for Jan. But Master
Lake was not to be interfered with, and, when the schoolmaster spoke of
poison, thought himself witty as he replied,—
“It be a uncommon slow pison then, Master Swift.”
It must also be allowed that such epidemics, once started, do havoc in
apparently clean houses and amongst well-fed people.
It was a little foster-sister of Jan’s who sickened first. She died
within two days. Her burial was hasty enough, but Mrs. Lake had no time
to fret about that, for a second child was ill. Like many another
householder, the poor windmiller was now ready enough to look to his
drains, and so forth; but it may be doubted if the general stirring up of
dirty places at this moment did not do as much harm as good. It was
hot,—terribly hot. Day after day passed without a breeze to cool the
burning skins of the sick, and yet it was not sunshiny. People did say
that the pestilence hung like a murky vapor above the district, and hid
the sun.
Trades were slack, corn-grinding amongst the rest, and Master Lake did
the housework, helped by Jan and Abel. He was stunned by the suddenness
and the weight of the calamity which had come to him. He was very kind
to Mrs. Lake, but the poor woman was almost past any feeling but that
which, as a sort of instinct or inspiration, guided a constant watching
and waiting on her sick children. She never slept, and would not have
eaten, but that Master Lake used his authority to force some food upon
her. At this time Jan’s chief occupations were cookery and dish-washing.
His constant habit of observation made all the experiences of life an
education for him; he had often watched his foster-mother prepare the
family meals, and he prepared them now, for Abel and the windmiller could
not, and she was with the sick children.
Before the second child died, two more fell ill on the same day. Only
Abel and Jan were still “about.” The mother moved like an automaton, and
never spoke. Now and then a deep sigh or a low moan would escape her,
and the miller would move tenderly to her side, and say, “Bear up,
missus; bear up, my lass,” and then go back to his pipe and his
cherry-wood chair, where he seemed to grow gray as he sat.
Master Swift came from time to time to the mill. He was everywhere,
helping, comforting, and exhorting. Some said his face shone with the
light of another world, for which he was “marked.” Others whispered that
the strain was telling on him, and that it wore the look it had had in
the brief insanity which followed his child’s death. But all agreed that
the very sight of him brought help and consolation. The windmiller grew
to watch for him, and to lean on him in the helplessness of his despair.
And he listened humbly to the old man’s fervid religious counsels. His
own little threads of philosophy were all blowing loose and useless in
this storm of trouble.
The evening that Master Swift came up to arrange about the burial of the
second child, he found the other two just dead. The first two had
suffered much and been delirious, but these two had sunk painlessly in a
few hours, and had fallen asleep for the last time in each other’s arms.
It did not lessen the force of Master Swift’s somewhat stern consolations
that in all good faith he conveyed in them an expectation that the Last
Day was at hand. Many people thought so, and it was, perhaps, not
unnatural. In these days, which were long years of suffering, they were
shut off from the rest of humanity, and the village was the world to
them,—a world very near its end. With Death so busy, it seemed as if
Judgment could hardly linger long.
It is true that this did not form a part of the Rector’s religious
exhortations. But some good people were shocked by the tea-party that he
gave to the young people of the place, and the games that followed it in
the Rectory meads, at the very height of the fever; though the doctor
said it was better than a hogshead of medicine.
“To encourage low spirits in this panic is just to promote suicide, if ye
like the responsibeelity of that,” said the doctor to Master Swift, who
had confided his doubts as to the seemliness of the entertainment. “I
tell ye there’s a lairge proportion of folk dies just because their
neighbors have died before them, for the want of their attention being
directed to something else. Away wi’ ye, schoolmaster, and take your
tuning-fork to ask the blessing wi’. What says the Scripture, man? ‘The
living, the living, he shall praise Thee!’”
The doctor was a Scotchman, and Master Swift always listened with
sympathy to a North countryman. He was convinced, too, and took his
tuning-fork to the meals, and led the grace.
Nor could his expectation of the speedy end of all things restrain his
instinctive anxiety and watchfulness for Jan’s health. On the evening of
that visit to the mill, he used some little manoeuvring to accomplish
Jan’s being sent back with him to the village, to arrange for the burial
of the three children.
A glow of satisfaction suffused his rough face as he got Jan out of the
tainted house into the fresh evening air, though it paled again before
that other look which was now habitual to him, as, waving his hand
towards the ripening corn-fields, he quoted from one of Mr. Herbert’s
loftiest hymns,—
“We talk of harvests,—there are no such things,
But when we leave our corn and hay.
There is no fruitful year but that which brings
The last and loved, though dreadful Day.
Oh, show Thyself to me,
Or take me up to Thee!”