WITHOUT THE WOLF.
“Father,” said Lola, “there are ever so many people in the village ill
with fever. Isn’t it sad?”
Mr. and Mrs. Greswold, of Enderby Manor, had been submitting to a
fortnight’s dissipation in London, and this was their first Sunday at
home after that interval. They had returned late on the previous night,
and house and gardens had all the sweetness and freshness of a scene to
which one is restored after absence. They had spent the summer morning
in the little village church with their daughter; and now they were
enjoying the leisure interval between church and luncheon.
George Greswold sat in a lounging-chair under a cedar within twenty
yards of the dining-room windows, and Lola was hanging about him as he
read the _Athenæum_, caressing him with little touches of light hands
upon his hair or his coat-collar, adoring him with all her might after
the agony of severance.
She was his only child, and the love between them was passing the love
of the father and daughter of every-day life. It was an almost romantic
attachment.
Like most only daughters, Lola was precocious, far in advance of her
years in thoughtfulness and emotion, though perhaps a little behind
the average girl of twelve in the severities of feminine education.
She had been her mother’s chief companion ever since she could speak,
the confidante of all that mother’s thoughts and fancies, which were
as innocent as those of childhood itself. She had read much more than
most girls of her age, and had been made familiar with poets whose
names are only known to the schoolgirl in a history of literature. She
knew a good deal about the best books in European literature; but, most
of all, she knew the hearts and minds of her father and mother, their
loves and likings, their joys and sorrows. She had never been shut out
from their confidence; she had never been told to go and play when they
wanted to talk to each other. She had sat with them, and walked and
ridden and driven with them ever since she was old enough to dispense
with her nurse’s arms. She had lived her young life with them, and had
been a part of their lives.
George Greswold looked up from his _Athenæum_ in quick alarm.
“Fever!” he exclaimed, “fever at Enderby!”
“Strange, isn’t it, father? Everybody is wondering about it. Enderby
has always been such a healthy village, and you have taken such pains
to make it so.”
“Yes, love, I have done my best. I am a landlord for pleasure, and not
for gain, as you and mother know.”
“And what seems strangest and worst of all,” continued Lola, “is that
this dreadful fever has broken out among the people you and mother and
I are fondest of—our old friends and pensioners—and the children we
know most about. It seems so hard that those you and mother have helped
the most should be the first to be ill.”
“Yes, love, that must seem very hard to my tender-hearted darling.”
Her father looked up at her fondly as she stood behind his chair,
her white arm leaning upon his shoulder. The summer was in its
zenith. It was strawberry-time, rose-time, haymaking-time—the season
of nightingales and meadow-sweet and tall Mary lilies, and all those
lovely things that cluster in the core of summer’s great warm heart.
Lola was all in white—a loose muslin frock, straight from shoulder
to instep. Her thick gold hair fell straight as her frock below her
ungirdled waist, and, in her white and gold, she had the look of an
angel in an early Italian picture. Her eyes were as blue as that
cloudless sky of midsummer which took a deeper azure behind the
black-green branches of the cedar.
“My pet, I take it this fever is some slight summer malady. Cottagers
are such ravens. They always make the worst of an illness.”
“O, but they really have been very bad. Mary Martin has had the fever,
but she is getting better. And there’s Johnny Giles; you know what a
strong boy _he_ is. He’s very bad, poor little chap—so delirious; and I
do feel so sorry for his poor mother. And young Mrs. Peter has it, and
two of her children.”
“It must be contagious,” cried Greswold, seizing his daughter’s round
white arm with an agitated movement. “You have not been to see any
of them, have you, Lola?” he asked, looking at her with unspeakable
anxiety.
“No; Bell wouldn’t let me go to see any of them; but of course I have
taken them things every day—wine and beef-tea and jelly, and everything
we could think of; and they have had as much milk as they liked.”
“You should not have gone yourself with the things, darling. You should
have sent them.”
“That would seem so unkind, as if one hardly cared; and Puck with
nothing to do all the time but to drag me about. It was no trouble to
go myself. I did not even go inside the cottages. Bell said I mustn’t.”
“Bell was right. Well, I suppose there is no harm done if you didn’t
go into any of the cottages; and it was very sweet of you to take the
things yourself; like Red Riding Hood, only without the wolf. There
goes the gong. I hope you are hungry.”
“Not very. The weather is too warm for eating anything but
strawberries.”
He looked at her anxiously again, ready to take alarm at a word.
“Yes, it is too warm in this south-western country,” he said nervously.
“We’ll go to Scotland next week.”
“So soon?”
“Why not a little sooner than usual, for once in a way?”
“I shall be sorry to go away while the people are ill,” she said
gravely.
George Greswold forgot that the gong had sounded. He sat, leaning
forward, in a despondent attitude. The very mention of sickness in
the land had unhinged him. This child was so dear to him, his only
one. He had done all that forethought, sense, and science could do to
make the village which lay at his doors the perfection of health and
purity. Famous sanitarians had been entertained at the Manor, and had
held counsel with Mr. Greswold upon the progress of sanitation, and
its latest developments. They had wondered with him over the blind
ignorance of our forefathers. They had instructed him how to drain his
house, and how to ventilate and purify his cottages. They had assured
him that, so far as lay within the limits of human intelligence,
perfection had been achieved in Enderby village and Enderby Manor House.
And now his idolised daughter hung over his chair and told him that
there was fever raging in the land, his land; the land which he loved
as if it were a living thing, and on which he had lavished care and
money ever since he had owned it. Other men might consider their
ancestral estates as something to be lived upon; George Greswold
thought of his forefathers’ house and lands as something to be lived
for. His cottages were model cottages, and he was known far and wide as
a model landlord.
“George, are you quite forgetting luncheon?” asked a voice from one of
the open windows, and he looked up to see a beautiful face looking out
at him, framed in hair of Lola’s colour.
“My dear Mildred, come here for a moment?” he said, and his wife went
to him, smiling still, but with a shade of uneasiness in her face.
“Go in, pet. We’ll follow you directly,” he said to his daughter; and
then he rose slowly, with an air of being almost broken down by a great
trouble, and put his hand through his wife’s arm, and led her along the
velvet turf beyond the cedar.
“Mildred, have you heard of this fever?”
“Yes; Louisa told me this morning when she was doing my hair. It seems
to be rather bad; but there cannot be any danger, surely, after all you
have done to make the cottages perfect in every way?”
“One cannot tell. There may be a germ of evil brought from somewhere
else. I am sorry Lola has been among the people.”
“O, but she has not been inside any of the cottages. Bell took care to
prevent that.”
“Bell was wise, but she might have done better still. She should have
telegraphed to us. Lola must not go about any more. You will see to
that, won’t you, dearest? Before the end of the week I will take you
both to Scotland.”
“Do you really suppose there can be danger?” she asked, growing very
pale.
“No, no, I don’t apprehend danger. Only it is better to be
over-cautious than over-bold. We cannot be too careful of our treasure.”
“No, no, indeed,” answered the mother, with a piteous look.
“Mother,” called Lola from the window, “are you ever coming? Pomfret
will be late for church.”
Pomfret was the butler, whose convenience had to be studied upon
Sundays. The servants dined while the family were at luncheon, and
almost all the establishment went to afternoon service, leaving a
footman and an under-housemaid in sole possession of the grave old
manor-house, where the silence had a solemnity as in some monastic
chapel. Lola was anxious that luncheon should begin, and Pomfret be
dismissed to eat his dinner.
This child of twelve had more than a woman’s forethought. She spent her
life in thinking about other people; but of all those whom she loved,
and for whom she cared, her father was first and chief. For him her
love was akin to worship.
She watched his face anxiously now, as she took her seat at his right
hand, and was silent until Pomfret had served the soup and retired,
leaving all the rest of the luncheon on the table, and the wine on a
dumb-waiter by his master’s side.
There was always a cold lunch on Sundays, and the evening meal was
also cold, a compromise between dinner and supper, served at nine
o’clock, by which time the servants had gratified their various tastes
for church or chapel, and had enjoyed an evening walk. There was no
parsonage in England where the day of rest was held in more reverence
than it was at Enderby Manor.
Mr. Greswold was no bigot, his religion in no wise savoured of the
over-good school; but he was a man of deep religious convictions; and
he had been brought up to honour Sunday as a day set apart.
The Sunday parties and Sunday amusements of fashionable London were an
abomination to him, though he was far too liberal-minded to wish to
shut museums and picture-galleries against the people.
“Father,” said Lola, when they were alone, “I’m afraid you had your bad
dream last night.”
Greswold looked at her curiously.
“No, love, my dreams were colourless, and have left not even a
remembrance.”
“And yet you look sorrowful, just as you always look after your bad
dream.”
“Your father is anxious about the cottagers who are ill, dearest,” said
Mrs. Greswold. “That is all.”
“But you must not be unhappy about them, father dear. You don’t think
that any of them will die, do you?” asked Lola, drawing very near him,
and looking up at him with awe-stricken eyes.
“Indeed, my love, I hope not. They shall not die, if care can save
them. I will walk round the village with Porter this afternoon, and
find out all about the trouble. If there is anything that he cannot
understand, we’ll have Dr. Hutchinson over from Southampton, or a
physician from London if necessary. My people shall not be neglected.”
“May I go with you this afternoon, father?”
“No, dearest, neither you nor mother must leave the grounds till we go
away. I will have no needless risks run by my dear ones.”
Neither mother nor daughter disputed his will upon this point. He was
the sole arbiter of their lives. It seemed almost as if they lived
only to please him. Both would have liked to go with him; both thought
him over-cautious; yet neither attempted to argue the point. Happy
household in which there are no arguments upon domestic trifles, no
bickerings about the infinitesimals of life!
Enderby Manor was one of those ideal homes which adorn the face of
England and sustain its reputation as the native soil of domestic
virtues, the country in which good wives and good mothers are
indigenous.
There are many such ideal homes in the land as to outward aspect, seen
from the high-road, across park or pasture, shrubbery or flower-garden;
but only a few of these sustain the idea upon intimate knowledge of the
interior.
Here, within as well as without, the atmosphere was peace. Those
velvet lawns and brilliant flower-beds were not more perfect than the
love between husband and wife, child and parents. No cloud had ever
shadowed that serene heaven of domestic peace. George Greswold had
married at thirty a girl of eighteen who adored him; and those two
had lived for each other and for their only child ever since. All
outside the narrow circle of family love counted only as the margin
or the framework of life. All the deepest and sweetest elements of
life were within the veil. Mildred Greswold could not conceive a
fashionable woman’s existence—a life given up to frivolous occupations
and futile excitements—a life of empty pleasure faintly flavoured with
art, literature, science, philanthropy, and politics, and fancying
itself eminently useful and eminently progressive. She had seen such
an existence in her childhood, and had wondered that any reasoning
creature could so live. She had turned her back upon the modish world
when she married George Greswold, and had surrendered most of the
delights of society to lead quiet days in her husband’s ancestral home,
loving that old house for his sake, as he loved it for the sake of the
dead.
They were not in outer darkness, however, as to the movement of the
world. They spent a fortnight at Limmers occasionally, when the fancy
moved them. They saw all the pictures worth seeing, heard a good deal
of the best music, mixed just enough in society to distinguish gold
from tinsel, and to make a happy choice of friends.
They occasionally treated themselves to a week in Paris, and their
autumn holidays were mostly spent in a shooting-box twenty miles
beyond Inverness. They came back to the Manor in time for the
pheasant-shooting, and the New Year generally began with a house-party
which lasted with variations until the hunting was all over, and the
young leaves were green in the neighbouring forest. No lives could
have been happier, or fuller of interest; but the interest all centred
in home. Farmers and cottagers on the estate were cared for as a part
of home; and the estate itself was loved almost as a living thing by
husband and wife, and the fair child who had been born to them in the
old-fashioned house.
The grave red-brick manor-house had been built when William III.
was King; and there were some Dutch innovations in the Old English
architecture, notably a turret or pavilion at the end of each wing,
and a long bowling-green on the western side of the garden. The walls
had that deep glowing red which is only seen in old brickwork, and the
black glazed tiles upon the hopper roof glittered in the sunlight with
the prismatic hues of antique Rhodian glass. The chief characteristic
of the interior was the oak-panelling, which clothed the rooms
and corridors as in a garment of sober brown, and would have been
suggestive of gloom but for the pictures and porcelain which brightened
every wall, and the rich colouring of brocaded curtains and tapestry
_portières_. The chief charm of the house was the aspect of home life,
the books and musical instruments, the art treasures, and flowers,
and domestic trifles to be seen everywhere; the air which every room
and every nook and corner had of being lived in by home-loving and
home-keeping people.
The pavilion at the end of the south-west wing was Lola’s special
domain, that and the room communicating with it. That pretty
sitting-room, with dwarf book-shelves, water-colour pictures, and
Wedgwood china, was never called a schoolroom. It was Lola’s study.
“There shall be no suggestion of school in our home,” said George
Greswold.
It was he who chose his daughter’s masters, and it was often he who
attended during the lesson, listening intently to the progress of the
work, and as keenly interested in the pupil’s progress as the pupil
herself. Latin he himself taught her, and she already knew by heart
those noblest of Horace’s odes which are fittest for young lips. Their
philosophy saddened her a little.
“Is life always changing?” she asked her father; “must one never
venture to be quite happy?”
The Latin poet’s pervading idea of mutability, inevitable death, and
inevitable change impressed her with a flavour of sadness, child as she
was.
“My dearest, had Horace been a Christian, as you are, and had he lived
for others, as you do, he would not have been afraid to call himself
happy,” answered George Greswold. “He was a Pagan, and he put on the
armour of philosophy for want of the armour of faith.”
These lessons in the classics, taking a dead language not as a dry
study of grammar and dictionary, but as the gate to new worlds of
poetry and philosophy, had been Lola’s delight. She was in no wise
unpleasantly precocious; but she was far in advance of the conventional
schoolroom child, trained into characterless uniformity by a superior
governess. Lola had never been under governess rule. Her life at the
Manor had been as free as that of the butterflies. There was only Bell
to lecture her—white-haired Mrs. Bell, thin and spare, straight as an
arrow, at seventy-four years of age, the embodiment of servants’-hall
gentility, in her black silk afternoon gown and neat cambric cap—Bell,
who looked after Lola’s health, and Lola’s rooms, and was for ever
tidying the drawers and tables, and lecturing upon the degeneracy of
girlhood. It was her boast to have nursed Lola’s grandmother, as well
as Lola’s mother, which seemed going back to the remoteness of the dark
ages.
Enderby Manor was three miles from Romsey, and within riding or driving
distance of the New Forest and of Salisbury Cathedral. It lay in the
heart of a pastoral district watered by the Test, and was altogether
one of the most enjoyable estates in that part of the country.
Before luncheon was finished a messenger was on his way to the
village to summon Mr. Porter, more commonly Dr. Porter, the parish
and everybody’s doctor, an elderly man of burly figure, close-cropped
gray hair, and yeoman-like bearing—a man born on the soil, whose
father and grandfather and great-grandfather had cured or killed the
inhabitants of Enderby parish from time immemorial. Judging from the
tombstones in the pretty old churchyard, they must have cured more than
they killed; for those crumbling moss-grown stones bore the record of
patriarchal lives, and the union near Enderby was a museum of incipient
centenarians.
Mr. Porter came into the grave old library at the Manor looking more
serious than his wont, perhaps in sympathy with George Greswold’s
anxious face, turned towards the door as the footman opened it.
“Well, Porter, what does it all mean, this fever?” asked Greswold
abruptly.
Mr. Porter had a manner of discussing a case which was all his own.
He always appealed to his patient with a professional air, as if
consulting another medical authority, and a higher one than himself. It
was flattering, perhaps, but not always satisfactory.
“Well, you see, there’s the high temperature—104 in some cases—and
there’s the inflamed throat, and there’s headache. What do _you_ say?”
“Don’t talk nonsense, Porter; you must know whether it is an infectious
fever or not. If you don’t know, we’ll send to Southampton for
Hutchinson.”
“Of course, you can have him if you like. I judge more by temperature
than anything—the thermometer is a safer guide than the pulse, as you
know. I took their temperatures this morning before I went to church:
only one case in which there was improvement—all the others decidedly
worse; very strongly developed cases of malignant fever—typhus or
typhoid—which, as you know, by Jenner’s differentiation of the two
forms—”
“For God’s sake, man, don’t talk to me as if I were a doctor, and had
your ghoulish relish of disease! If you have the slightest doubt as to
treatment, send for Hutchinson.”
He took a sheaf of telegraph-forms from the stand in front of him, and
began to write his message while he was talking. He had made up his
mind that Dr. Hutchinson must come to see these humble sufferers, and
to investigate the cause of evil. He had taken such pains to create a
healthy settlement, had spared no expense; and for fifteen years, from
the hour of his succession until now, all had gone well with him. And
now there was fever in the land, fever in the air breathed by those two
beloved ones, daughter and wife.
“I have been so happy; my life has been cloudless, save for one dark
memory,” he said to himself, covering his face with his hands as he
leaned with his elbows on the table, while Mr. Porter expatiated upon
the cases in the village, and on fever in general.
“I have tested the water in all the wells—perfectly pure. There can be
nothing amiss with the milk, for all my patients are on Mrs. Greswold’s
list, and are getting their milk from your own dairy. The drainage
is perfection—yet here we have an outbreak of fever, which looks
remarkably like typhoid?”
“Why not say at once that it is typhoid?”
“The symptoms all point that way.”
“You say there can be nothing amiss with the milk. You have not
analysed it, I suppose?”
“Why should I? Out of your own dairy, where everything is managed in
the very best way—the perfection of cleanliness in every detail.”
“You ought to have analysed the milk, all the same,” said Greswold
thoughtfully. “The strength of a chain is its weakest link. There may
be some weak link here, though we cannot put our fingers upon it—yet.
Are there many cases?”
“Let me see. There’s Johnny Giles, and Mrs. Peter and her children, and
Janet Dawson, and there’s Andrew Rogers, and there’s Mary Rainbow,”
began Mr. Porter, counting on his fingers as he went on, until the list
of sufferers came to eleven. “Mostly youngsters,” he said in conclusion.
“They ought to have been isolated,” said Greswold. “I will get out
plans for an infirmary to-morrow. There is the willow-field, on the
other side of the village, a ridge of high ground sloping down
towards the parish drain, with a southern exposure, a capital site for
a hospital. It is dreadful to think of fever-poison spreading from
half-a-dozen different cottages. Which was the first case?”
“Little Rainbow.”
“That fair-haired child whom I used to see from my dressing-room window
every morning as she went away from the dairy, tottering under a
pitcher of milk? Poor little Polly! She was a favourite with us all. Is
she very ill?”
“Yes, I think hers is about the best case,” answered the doctor
unctuously; “the others are a little vague; but there’s no doubt about
_her_, all the symptoms strongly marked—a very clear case.”
“Is there any danger of a fatal termination?”
“I’m afraid there is.”
“Poor little Polly—poor pretty little girl! I used to know it was seven
o’clock when I saw that bright little flaxen head flit by the yew hedge
yonder. Polly was as good a timekeeper as any clock in the village. And
you think she may die? You have not told Lola, I hope?”
“No, I have not let out anything about danger. Lola is only too anxious
already.”
“I will put the infirmary in hand to-morrow; and I will take my wife
and daughter to Scotland on Tuesday.”
“Upon my word, it will be a very good thing to get them away. These
fever cases are so mysterious. There’s no knowing what shape infection
may take. I have the strongest belief in your system of drainage—”
“Nothing is perfect,” said Greswold impatiently. “The science of
sanitation is still in its infancy. I sometimes think we have not
advanced very far from the knowledge of our ancestors, whose homes were
desolated by the Black Death. However, don’t let us talk, Porter. Let
us act, if we can. Come and look at the dairy.”
“You don’t apprehend evil there?”
“There are three sources of typhoid poison—drainage, water, milk. You
say the drains and the water are good, and that the milk comes from my
own dairy. If you are right as to the first and second, the third must
be wrong, no matter whose dairy it may come from.”
He took up his hat, and went out of the house with the doctor. Gardens
and shrubberies stretched before them in all their luxuriance of summer
verdure, gardens and shrubberies which had been the delight and pride
of many generations of Greswolds, but loved more dearly by none than by
George Greswold and his wife. In Mildred’s mind the old family house
was a part of her husband’s individuality, an attribute rather than
a mere possession. Every tree and every shrub was sacred. These, his
mother’s own hands had cropped and tended; those, grandfathers and
great-grandfathers and _arrière_ great-grandfathers had planted in
epochs that distance has made romantic.
On the right of the hall-door a broad gravel path led in a serpentine
sweep towards the stables, a long, low building spread over a
considerable area, and hidden by shrubberies. The dairy was a little
further off, approached by a winding walk through thickets of laurel
and arbutus. It had been originally a barn, and was used as a
receptacle for all manner of out-of-door lumber when Mildred came to
the Manor. She had converted the old stone building into a model dairy,
with outside gallery and staircase of solid woodwork, and with a Swiss
roof. Other buildings had been added. There were low cowhouses, and
tall pigeon-houses, and a picturesque variety of gables and elevations
which was delightful to the eye, seen on a summer afternoon such as
this June Sunday, amidst the perfume of clove carnations and old
English roses, and the cooing of doves.
Mrs. Greswold’s Channel Island cows were her delight—creatures with
cream-coloured coats, black noses, and wistful brown eyes. Scarcely a
day passed on which she did not waste an hour or so in the cowhouses
or in the meadows caressing these favourites. Each cow had her name
painted in blue and white above her stall, and the chief, or duchess of
the herd, was very severe in the maintenance of cowhouse precedence,
and knew how to resent the insolence of a new-comer who should presume
to cross the threshold in advance of her.
The dairy itself had a solemn and shadowy air, like a shrine, and
was as pretty as the dairy at Frogmore. The walls were lined with
Minton tiles, the shallow milk-pans were of Doulton pottery, and
quaintly-shaped pitchers of bright colours were ranged on china
brackets along the walls. The windows were latticed, and a pane
of ruby, rose, or amethyst appeared here and there among the old
bottle-green glass, and cast a patch of coloured light upon the cool
marble slab below.
The chief dairy-woman lived at an old-fashioned cottage on the
premises, with her husband, the cowkeeper; and their garden, which
lay at the back of the cowhouses and dairy, was the ideal old English
garden, in which flowers and fruit strive for the mastery. In a corner
of this garden, close to the outer offices of the cottage, among rows
of peas, and summer cabbages, and great overgrown lavender-bushes and
moss-roses, stood the old well, with its crumbling brick border and
ancient spindle, a well that had been dug when the old manor-house was
new.
There were other water arrangements for Mrs. Greswold’s dairy, a new
artesian well, on a hill a quarter of a mile from the kitchen-garden,
a well that went deep down into the chalk, and was famous for the
purity of its water. All the drinking-water of the house was supplied
from this well, and the water was laid on in iron pipes to dairy and
cowhouses. All the vessels used for milk or cream were washed in this
water; at least, such were Mr. Greswold’s strict orders—orders supposed
to be carried out under the supervision of his bailiff and housekeeper.
Mr. Porter looked at a reeking heap of stable manure that sprawled
within twenty feet of the old well with suspicion in his eye, and from
the manure-heap he looked at the back premises of the old cob-walled
cottage.
“I’m afraid there may have been soakage from that manure-heap into the
well,” he said; “and if your dairy vessels are washed in that water—”
“But they never are,” interrupted Mr. Greswold; “that water is used
only for the garden—eh, Mrs. Wadman?”
The dairy-woman was standing on the threshold of her neat little
kitchen, curtseying to her master, resplendent in her Sunday gown of
bright blue merino, and her Sunday brooch, containing her husband’s
photograph, coloured out of knowledge.
“No, of course not, sir; leastways, never except when there was
something wrong with the pipes from the artesian.”
“Something wrong; when was that? I never heard of anything wrong.”
“Well, sir, my husband didn’t want to be troublesome, and Mr. Thomas
he gave the order for the men from Romsey, that was on the Saturday
after working-hours, and they was to come as it might be on the Monday
morning, and they never come near; and Mr. Thomas he wrote and wrote,
and my husband he says it ain’t no use writing, and he takes the pony
and rides over to Romsey in his overtime, and he complains about the
men not coming, and they tells him there’s a big job on at Broadlands
and not a plumber to be had for love or money; but the pipes is all
right _now_, sir.”
“Now? Since when have they been in working order?”
“Since yesterday, sir. Mr. Thomas was determined he’d have everything
right before you came back.”
“And how long have you been using that water,” pointing to the well,
with its moss-grown brickwork and flaunting margin of yellow stonecrop,
“for dairy purposes?”
“Well, you see, sir, we was obliged to use water of some kind; and
there ain’t purer or better water than that for twenty mile round. I
always use it for my kettle every time I make tea for me or my master,
and never found no harm from it in the last fifteen years.”
“How long have you used it for the dairy?” repeated George Greswold
angrily; “can’t you give a straight answer, woman?”
Mrs. Wadman could not: had never achieved a direct reply to a plain
question within the memory of man.
“The men was to have come on the Monday morning, first thing,” she
said, “and they didn’t come till the Tuesday week after that, and then
they was that slow——”
George Greswold walked up and down the garden path, raging.
“She won’t answer!” he cried. “Was it a week—a fortnight—three weeks
ago that you began to use that water for your dairy?” he asked sternly;
and gradually he and the doctor induced her to acknowledge that the
garden well had been in use for the dairy nearly three weeks before
yesterday.
“Then that is enough to account for everything,” said Dr.
Porter. “First there is filtration of manure through a gravelly
soil—inevitable—and next there is something worse. She had her sister
here from Salisbury—six weeks ago—down with typhoid fever three days
after she came—brought it from Salisbury.”
“Yes, yes—I remember. You told me there was no danger of infection.”
“There need have been none. I made her use all precautions possible
in an old-fashioned cottage; but however careful she might be, there
would be always the risk of a well—close at hand like that one—getting
tainted. I asked her if she ever used that water for anything but the
garden, and she said no, the artesian well supplied every want. And now
she talks about her kettle, and tells us coolly that she has been using
that polluted water for the last three weeks—and poisoning a whole
village.”
“Me poisoning the village! O Dr. Porter, how can you say such a cruel
thing? Me, that wouldn’t hurt a fly if I knew it!”
“Perhaps not, Mrs. Wadman; but I’m afraid you’ve hurt a good many of
your neighbours without knowing it.”
George Greswold stood in the pathway silent and deadly pale. He had
been so happy for the last thirteen years—a sky without a cloud—and now
in a moment the clouds were closing round him, and again all might be
darkness, as it had been once before in his life. Calamity for which he
felt himself unaccountable had come upon him before—swift as an arrow
from the bow—and now again he stood helpless, smitten by the hand of
Fate.
He thought of the little village child, with her guileless face,
looking up at his window as she tripped by with her pitcher. His dole
of milk had been fatal to the simple souls who had looked up to him
as a Providence. He had taken such pains that all should be sweet and
wholesome in his people’s cottages; he had spent money like water, and
had lectured them and taught them; and lo! from his own luxurious home
the evil had gone forth. Careless servants, hushing up a difficulty,
loth to approach him with plain facts lest they should be considered
troublesome, had wrought this evil, had spread disease and death in the
land.
And his own and only child, the delight of his life, the apple of
his eye—that tainted milk had been served at her table! Amidst all
that grace of porcelain and flowers the poison had lurked, as at the
cottagers’ board. What if she, too, should suffer?
He meant to take her away in a day or two—now—now when the cause of
evil was at work no longer. The thought that it might be too late, that
the germ of poison might lurk in the heart of that fair flower, filled
him with despair.
Mrs. Wadman had run into her cottage, shedding indignant tears at Dr.
Porter’s cruelty. She came out again, with a triumphant air, carrying
a tumbler of water.
“Just look at it, sir,” she said; “look how bright and clear it is.
There never was better water.”
“My good woman, in this case brightness and clearness mean corruption,”
said the doctor. “If you’ll give me a pint of that water in a bottle
I’ll take it home with me, and test it before I sleep to-night.”