The spectacle of carrying the Good Lady up to the brow was more
terrifying to the people of Bleaburn than any of the funerals they had
seen creeping along by the same path,—more even than the passage of the
laden cart, with the pall over it, on the morning of the opening of the
new burying-grounds. The people of Bleaburn, extremely ignorant, were
naturally extremely superstitious. It was not only the very ignorant who
were superstitious. The fever itself was never supposed to be more
catching than a mood of superstition; and so it now appeared in
Bleaburn. For many weeks past the Good Lady had been regarded as a sort
of talisman in the people’s possession. She breathed out such
cheerfulness wherever she turned her face, that it seemed as if the
place could not go quite to destruction while she was in it. Some who
would not have admitted to themselves that they held such an impression
were yet infected with the common dismay, as well as with the sorrow of
parting with her. If Mary had had the least idea of the probable effect
of her departure, she would have been less admired by the Kirbys for her
docility,—for she would certainly have insisted on staying where she
was.
“I declare I don’t know what to do,” the doctor confessed in confidence
to the clergyman. “Every patient I have is drooping, and the people in
the street look like creatures under doom. The comet was bad enough;
and, before we have well done with it, here is a panic which is ten
times worse.”
“I tried to lend a hand to help you against the comet,” replied Mr.
Kirby. “I think I may be of some use again now. Shall I tell them it is
a clear case of idolatry?”
“Why, it is in fact so, Mr. Kirby; but yet, I shrink from appearing to
cast the slightest disrespect on her.”
“Of course; of course. The thing I want to show them is what she would
think,—how shocked she would be if she knew the state of mind she left
behind.”
“Ah! if you can do that!”
“I will see about it. Now tell me how we are going on.”
The Doctor replied by a look, which made Mr. Kirby shake his head.
Neither of them liked to say in words how awful was the state of things.
“It is such weather you see,” said the Doctor. “Damp and disagreeable as
it is, this December is as warm as September.”
“Five-and-twenty sorts of flowers out in my garden,” observed Mr. Kirby.
“I set the boys to count them yesterday. We shall have as many as that
on Christmas-day. A thing unheard of!”
“There will be no Christmas kept this year, surely,” said the Doctor.
“I don’t know that. My wife and I were talking it over yesterday. We
think * * Well, my boy,” to a little fellow who stood pulling his
forelock, “what have you to say to me? I am wanted at home, am I? Is
Mrs. Kirby there?”
The Doctor heard him say to himself, “Thank God!” when they saw the lady
coming out of a cottage near. The Doctor had long suspected that the
clergyman and his wife were as sensible of one another’s danger as the
most timid person in Bleaburn was of his own; and now he was sure of it.
Henceforth, he understood that they were never easy out of one another’s
sight; and that when the clergyman was sent for from the houses he was
passing, his first idea always was that his wife was taken ill. It was
so. They were not people of sentiment. They had settled their case with
readiness and decision, when it first presented itself to them; and they
never looked back. But it did not follow that they did not feel. They
agreed, with the smallest possible delay, that they ought to succeed to
the charge of Bleaburn on Mr. Finch’s death; that they ought to place
their boys at school, and their two girls with their aunt till Bleaburn
should be healthy again; and that they must stand or fall by the duty
they had undertaken. As for separating, that was an idea mentioned only
to be dismissed. They now nodded across the little street, as Mrs. Kirby
proceeded on her round of visits, and her husband went home, to see who
wanted him there.
In the corner of the little porch was a man sitting, crouching and
cowering as if in bodily pain. Mr. Kirby went up to him, stooped down to
see his face (but it was covered with his hands), and at last ventured
to remove his hat. Then the man looked up. It was a square, hard face,
which from its make would have seemed immovable; but it was anything but
that now. It is a strange sight, the working of emotion in a countenance
usually as hard as marble!
“Neale!” exclaimed Mr. Kirby. “Somebody ill at the farm, I am afraid.”
“Not yet, Sir; not yet, Mr. Kirby. But Lord save us! we know nothing of
how soon it may be so.”
“Exactly so: that has been the case of every man, woman, and child, hour
by hour since Adam fell.”
“Yes, Sir; but the present time is something different from that. I
came, Sir, to say * * I came, Mr. Kirby, because I can get no peace or
rest, day or night; for thoughts, Sir; for thoughts.”
Mr. Kirby glanced round him. “Come in,” said he, “Come into my study.”
Neale followed him in; but instead of sitting down, he walked straight
to the window, and seemed to be looking into the garden. Mr. Kirby, who
had been on foot all the morning, sat down and waited, shaving away at a
pen meanwhile.
“On Sunday, Sir,” said Neale at last, in a whispering kind of voice,
“you read that I have kept back the hire of the labourers that reaped
down my fields, and that their cry has entered into the ears of the
Lord.”
“That _you_ kept back the hire of the labourer?” exclaimed Mr. Kirby,
quickly turning in his seat, so as to face his visitor. He laid his hand
on the pocket-bible on the table, opened at the Epistle of James, and,
with his finger on the line, walked to the window with it.
“Yes, Sir, that is it,” said Neale. “I would return the hire I kept
back,—(I can’t exactly say by fraud, for it was from hardness)—I would
pay it all willingly now; but the men are dead. The fever has left but a
few of them.”
“I see,” said Mr. Kirby. “I see how it is. You think the fever is
dogging your heels, because the cries of your labourers have entered
into the ears of the Lord. You want to buy off the complaints of the
dead, and the anger of God, by spending now on the living. You are
afraid of dying; and you would rather part with your money, dearly as
you love it, than die; and so you are planning to bribe God to let you
live.”
“Is not that rather hard, Sir?”
“Hard?—Is it true? that is the question.”
When they came to look closely into the matter, it was clear enough.
Neale, driven from his accustomed methods and employments, and from his
profits, and all his outward reliances, was adrift and panic-stricken.
When the Good Lady was carried out of the hollow, the last security
seemed gone, and the place appeared to be delivered over to God’s wrath;
his share of which, his conscience showed him to be pointed out in the
words of scripture which had so impressed his mind, and which were
ringing in his ears, as he said, day and night.
“As for the Good Lady,” said Mr. Kirby, “I am sure I hope she will never
hear how some of the people here regard her, after all she has done for
them. If anything could bow her spirit, it would be that.” Seeing Neale
stare in surprise, he went on. “One would think she was a kind of witch
or sorceress; that there was some sort of magic about her; instead of
her being a sensible, kind-hearted, fearless woman, who knows how to
nurse, and is not afraid to do it when it is most wanted.”
“Don’t you think then, Sir, that God sent her to us?”
“Certainly; as he sent the Doctor, and my wife and me: as he sends
people to each other whenever they meet. I am sure you never heard the
Good Lady say that she was specially sent.”
“She is so humble,—so natural, Sir,—she was not likely to say such a
thing.”
“Very true: and she is too wise to think it. No—there is nothing to be
frightened about in her going away. She could have done no good here,
while unable to walk or sit up; and she will recover better where she is
gone. If she recovers, as I expect she will, she will come and see us;
and I shall think that as good luck as you can do; not because she
carries luck about with her, but because there is nothing we so much
want as her example of courage, and sense and cheerfulness.”
“To be sure,” said Neale, in a meditative way, “she could not keep the
people from dying.”
“No indeed,” observed Mr. Kirby; “you and some others took care that she
should not.”