TRUE HYGIENE
Whenever my brother Harold deigned to visit us from London, we had not
much time to do anything more than try to understand his last idea. If
he had only been fond of society, or philosophy, or even ladies, we
could have got on with him ever so much better; for he really never
meant any harm at all. Pity for the pressure he was putting on his brain
saddened to some extent the pride which he inspired; and when he came
down to announce his last _eureka_, the first thing my mother did was to
make him show his tongue. My mother did think mighty things of this the
first-born child she had; and him a son--endowed beyond all
sister-babies with everything. Nevertheless she did her utmost to be
fair to all of us; and sometimes when her eyes went round us, at
Christmastime, or birthdays, any stranger would have thought that we all
were gifted equally.
I am happy to say that this was not the case. Never has it been my gift
to invent anything whatever; not even a single incident in this tale
which I am telling you. Everything is exactly as it happened; and
according to some great authorities, we too are exactly as we happened.
But my brother Harold can never have happened. He must have been
designed with a definite purpose, and a spirit to work his way
throughout, although it turned to Proteus. He had been through every
craze and fad,--I beg his pardon,--Liberation of the Age, Enlightenment,
Amelioration of Humanity, &c. &c., and now in indignation at the Pump
Court drains, he was gone upon what he called _Hygiene_.
"What the devil do you mean, by this blessed Hygiene?" Though by no
means strong at poetry, I turned out this very neat couplet one day,
with the indignation that makes verses, when I saw that he had a big
trunk in the passage, which certain of us still called the hall.
"George, will you never have any large ideas?" he replied with equal
rudeness, such as brothers always use. "This time, even you will find it
hard to be indifferent to my new discovery. The ardour of truth has
triumphed."
"Go ahead," I said, for he had had his dinner, though that made very
little difference to him, his ardour of truth being toast and water now.
"But if you won't have a pipe, I will. Is the smell anti-hygienic?"
"Undoubtedly it is. About that there cannot be two sane opinions. Puff
away; but be well assured that at every pull you are inhaling, and at
every expiration spreading--"
"All right. Tell us something new, and you are never far to seek in
that--Pennyroyal, fenugreek, ruta nigra, tin-tacks hydrised, hyoscyamus,
colocasia, geopordon carbonised--what is the next panacea?"
"Tabacum Nicotianum." Nothing pleased my brother more than the charge of
inconsistency and self-contradiction. Seeing that he lay in wait for
this, I would not let him have it, but answered with indifference--
"That is right, old fellow. I am glad that you have come to a sensible
view of Tobacco. Any very choice cigars in your trunk, old chap? But I
should fear that you had invented them."
No one could help liking Harold at first sight. He was simply the most
amiable fellow ever seen. Amiable chiefly in a passive way, although he
was ready for any kind action, when the claims of discovery permitted.
And now as we were strolling in the park, and the fine Surrey air had
brightened his handsome face with more "hygiene" than he ever would
produce, I was not surprised at the amount of money he extracted even
from our groans.
"Would you like to know what is in my trunk?" he asked with that simple
smile, which was at once the effect and the cause of his magnetism. "I
have done it for the sake of the family first, and then of the
neighbourhood, and then of the county. I shall offer the advantages to
Surrey first. As an old County family, that is our duty. There is some
low typhoid in the valleys still. Run and fetch my trunk, George. It is
heavy for me, but nothing for your great shoulders. Bring it to the
bower here; I don't want to open it in the house, because,
because--well, you'll soon know why, when you follow my course of
reasoning."
I brought him his trunk, and he put it on a table, where people had tea
in the park sometimes, to watch a game of cricket from a sheltered
place. "Come quite close," he said very kindly, throwing open the trunk,
and then making for the door, while I rashly stooped over his property.
In another minute I was lying down, actually sneezed off my legs, and
unable to open my eyes from some spasmodic affection or affliction.
"That's right," said Harold, in a tone of satisfaction; "don't be
uneasy, my dear brother. For at least a fortnight you are immune from
the biggest enterprises of the most active Local Board. You may sit upon
the manholes of the best sanitated town; you may sleep in the House of
Commons; you may pay a medical fee, and survive it. It is my own
discovery. See those boxes?"
"Not yet. But I shall as soon as my eyes get right!" I was able now to
leave off sneezing, almost for a second. And when I had chewed a bit of
leaf he gave me, there seemed to be something great in this new idea.
"You are concluding with your usual slur"--my brother began again, as
soon as I was fit to receive reason instead of sympathy--"that this is
nothing more than an adaptation of _Lundy Foote_, _Irish blackguard_, or
_Welsh Harp_. George, you are wrong, as usual. You need not be capable
of speech for that. Your gifts of error can express themselves in
silence."
"Cowardly reasoner," I began, but the movement of larynx, or whatever it
might be, threw me out of "ratiocination." He had me at his mercy, and
he kept me so. To attempt to repeat what he said would convict me of
crankiness equal to his own, and worse--because he could do it, and I
cannot. But the point he insisted on most of all, and which after my
experience I could not but concede, was that no known preparation of
snuff without his special chemistry could have achieved this excellence.
"Pteroxylon, euphorbium, and another irritant unknown as yet to
Chemists, have brought this to the power needful. But this is not a
merely speculative thing. You feel a true interest in it now, George."
"As men praise mustard, with tears in their eyes. But let me never hear
of it, think of it, most of all never smell the like again. My nose will
be red, and my eyes sore for a fortnight."
Harold tucked my arm under his, with a very affectionate manner of his
own, which he knew that I never could resist. "Four pockets always in
your waistcoat," he observed, "and a flap over every one to keep it dry.
Now I very seldom ask a favour, do I, George, of you? Here are three
hundred little boxes here, as well as the bulk of my preparation. The
boxes are perfectly air-tight, made from my own design, very little
larger and not much thicker than an old crown-piece. You touch a spring
here, and the box flies open. Without that you never would know that it
was there. Promise me that you will always carry this, and open it
whenever you come to a place where the Local Boards have got the roads
up. One of my best friends, and I have not many, has lost his only
little girl,--such a darling, she used to sit upon my knee and promise
to marry me the moment she was big enough,--but now she has gone to a
better world, through the new parish authorities. Diphtheria in the
worst form, my dear boy!"
His eyes filled with tears, for he was very tender-hearted, and in the
warmth of the moment, I promised to carry that little box of his, as a
safeguard against sanitation.
"My dear George, you will never regret it. You will find it most useful,
I can assure you." He spoke with some gratitude, for he knew how much I
hated all such chemistry. Little did I think how true his words would
prove.
"Why, there goes that extraordinary fellow Stoneman!" I exclaimed
suddenly, to change the subject. "What a first-rate horse he always
rides! But there is something I ought to tell you about that great
Stockbroker. I have not told the Governor yet, because I was not meant
to do so, and must not, without the man's consent. But you ought to know
it, and he would not object to that."
"What has he discovered? I have often thought that men, who fall into
the thick of humanity, ought to get their minds into an extremely active
state; like mariners straining their eyes to discover--"
"The Gold Coast. There is nothing else they care for. But there I am
wronging Jackson Stoneman. He is a man of the world, if there ever was
one; and yet he is taken above the world, by love."
"Love of what?" asked my brother, who was sometimes hard upon people who
despised all the things he cared for. "Love of gold? Love of rank? Love
of dainty feeding? Love of his own fat self perhaps?"
"He is not fat. He is scarcely round enough. He is one of the most
active men in the kingdom. There are very few things that he cannot do.
And now he is deeply and permanently in love--"
"With filthy lucre. If there is anything I hate, it is the scorn of
humanity that goes with that." Harold, in a lofty mood, began to strap
up the trunk that was to save mankind.
"If filthy lucre means our Grace," I said with much emphasis, for it was
good to floor him, "you have hit the mark. But our Grace has not a
farthing." I very nearly added--"thanks to you." But it would have been
cruel, and too far beyond the truth.
"Ridiculous!" he answered, trying not to look surprised, though I knew
that I had got him there. "Why, his grandfather kept a shoe-shop."
"That is a vile bit of lying gossip. But even if it were so, the love of
humanity should not stop short of their shoes. I am afraid you are a
snob, Harold, with all your vast ideas."
"I am a little inclined to that opinion myself," he answered very
cordially. "But come, this is very strange news about Grace. Has she any
idea of the honour done her?"
"Not the smallest. So far as I know at least. And I think it is better
that she should not know. Just at present, I mean, until he has had
time."
"But surely, George, you would not encourage such a thing. Putting aside
the man's occupation, which may be very honourable if he is so himself,
what do we know of his character, except that he gives himself airs, and
is rather ostentatious?"
"He gives himself no airs. What you call ostentation is simply his
generosity. You forget that in right of his wealth he stands in the
place we have lost through our poverty. That makes it a delicate
position for him, especially in his behaviour to us. And do what he
will, we should scarcely do our duty to ourselves, unless we made the
worst of it."
"How long have you turned Cynic? Why, you put that rather neatly; I did
not think it was in you, George." It should be explained that my brother
Harold could never be brought to see that it was possible for me to do
anything even fairly well; unless it were in manual labour, or sporting,
or something else that he despised. And this was all I got for my
admiration of his powers!
"Never mind about me," I replied; "I am not a Cynic, and I never shall
be one. And when I spoke thus, I had not the least intention of
including my father, who is above all such stuff. But mother, and you
and I, and no doubt Grace herself, although she thinks so well of
everybody,--it would be against all human nature for us to take a kind
or even candid view of our successor's doings. And as for his station in
life, as you might call it, you must live entirely out of the world,
even in the heart of London, not to know that he is placed far above us
now. Everywhere, except among the old-fashioned people who call
themselves the County families, a man of his wealth would be thought
much more of, than we should have a chance of being. What good could we
do to anybody now? you must learn to look up to him, Harold my boy."
"Very well. I'll study him, whenever I get the chance. I can't look up
to any man for his luck alone; though I may for the way he employs it.
But he must not suppose that his money will buy Grace. If ever there
was a girl who tried to think for herself and sometimes succeeded,
probably it is our Grace. She cannot do much. What woman has ever yet
made any real discovery, although they are so inquisitive? But she has a
right to her own opinion."
"At any rate as to the disposal of herself." Here I was on strong
ground; though I never could argue with Harold upon scientific
questions. But I knew my dear Grace much better than he did; and she
always said that she liked me best, whenever I put that question to her;
not only to make up for mother's preferences in the wrong direction, but
also because she could understand me,--which did not require much
intelligence,--not to mention that I was much bigger and stronger than
Harold, though nothing like so good-looking, as anybody could see with
half an eye.
"Leave it so," said Harold; for he liked sometimes to assert himself, as
he had the right to do, when he cast away scientific weaknesses. "Let
such things take their course, old fellow. If Grace takes a liking to
him, that will prove that he is worthy of it. For she is uncommonly hard
to please. And she never seems to care about understanding me; perhaps
because she knows it would be hopeless. I want to go on to Godalming
to-morrow. There will be a meeting of Sanitary Engineers--the largest
minds of the period. I speak of them with deference; though as yet I am
unable to make out what the dickens they are up to. Can you get me the
one-horse trap from _The Bell_?"
"Most likely. I will go and see about it by-and-by. Old Jacob will
always oblige me if he can. But you won't take away your sneezing trunk?
You owe it to your native parish first."
"My native parish must abide its time. In country places there is seldom
any outbreak of virulent diseases, until they set up a Local Board. I
shall leave a score of Hygioptarmic boxes in your charge. The rest are
meant for places where the authorities stir up the dregs of infection,
and set them in slow circulation. And the first thing a Local Board
always does is that."
I did not contradict him, for the subject was beyond me. And fond as I
was of him, and always much enlarged by his visits, and the stirring up
of my dull ideas, it so happened that I did not want him now, when so
many things had to be considered, in which none of his discoveries would
help me. In fact it seemed to me that he thought much more of his
hygienic boxes, than of his and my dear sister.
When he was gone in the old rattle-trap from _The Bell_, with his trunk
beneath his feet, my mother seemed inclined at first to think that no
one had made enough of him.
"All for the benefit of others!" she exclaimed, after searching the
distance for one last view of him, if, haply, the sun might come out for
the purpose of showing his hat above some envious hedge; "Does that poor
boy ever think of himself? What makes it the more remarkable is that
this age is becoming so selfish, so wedded to all the smaller principles
of action, so incapable of taking a large view of anything. But Harold,
my Harold"--no words of the requisite goodness and greatness occurred to
my dear mother, and so she resorted to her handkerchief. "It seems as if
we always must be parted. It is for the good of mankind, no doubt; but
it does seem hard, though no one except myself seems so to regard it. It
was five o'clock yesterday before he came. It is not yet half-past ten,
and to think of the rapidly-increasing distance--"
"I defy him to get more than five miles an hour out of that old screw,"
I said. "Not even with one of his Hygioptarmic boxes tied beneath the
old chap's tail. Why, you can hear his old scuffle still, mother."
She listened intently, as if for a holy voice; while Grace looked at me
with a pleasant mixture of reproach and sympathy. For who did all the
real work? Who kept the relics of the property together? Who relieved
the little household of nearly all its trouble? Who went to market to
buy things without money, and (which is even harder still) to sell them
when nobody wanted them? Who toiled like a horse, and much longer than a
horse--however, I never cared to speak up for myself. As a general rule,
I would rather not be praised. And as for being thanked, it is pleasant
in its way, but apt to hurt the feelings of a very modest man; and, of
course, he knows that it will not last. After such a speech from my dear
mother, no one could have blamed me very severely, if I had put my
fishing-rod together and refused to do another stroke of work that day.