“Are not you the proprietor of several of the cottages in Bleaburn?”
“Yes: I have seven altogether.”
“I know them well,—too well. Neale, your conscience accuses you about
the hire of your labourers: but you have done worse things than oppress
them about wages. Part of the mischief you may be unaware of; but I know
you are not of all. I know that Widow Slaney speaks to you, year by
year, about repairing that wretched place she lives in. Have you done it
yet? Not you! I need not have asked; and yet you screw that poor woman
for her rent till she cannot sleep at night for thinking of it. You know
in your heart that what she says is true,—that if her son was
alive,—(and it was partly your hardness that sent him to the wars, and
to his terrible fate)—”
“Stop, Sir! I cannot bear it!” exclaimed Neale. “Sir, you should not
bear so hard on me. I have a son that met another bad fate at the wars:
and you know it, Mr. Kirby.”
“To be sure I do. And how do you treat him? You drove him away by
harshness; and now you say he shall not come back, because you cannot be
troubled with a cripple at home.”
“Not now, Sir. I say no such thing now. When I said that, I was in a bad
mood. I mean to be kind to him now: and I have told him so:—that is, I
have said so to the girl he is attached to.”
“You have? You have really seen her, and shown respect to the young
people?”
“I have, Sir.”
“Well: that is so far good. That is some foundation laid for a better
future.”
“I should be thankful, Sir, to make up for the past.”
“Ah!” said Mr. Kirby, shaking his head; “that is what can never be done.
The people, as you say, are dead: the misery is suffered: the mischief
is done, and cannot be undone. It is a lie, and a very fatal one, to say
that past sins may be atoned for.”
“O, Mr. Kirby!—don’t say that!”
“I must say it, because it is true. You said yourself that you cannot
make it up to those you have injured, because the men are dead. What is
that you are saying? that you wish the fever had taken you; and you
could go now and shoot yourself? Before you dare to say such things, you
should look at the other half of the case. Is not the future greater
than the past, because we have power over it? And is there not a good
text somewhere about forgetting the things that are behind, and pressing
forwards to those that are before?”
“O, Sir! if I could forget the past!”
“Well: you see you have scripture warrant for trying. But then the
pressing forwards to better things must go with it. If you forget the
past, and go on the same as ever, you might as well be in hell at once.
Then, I don’t know that your shooting yourself would do much harm to
anybody.”
“But, Sir, I am willing to do all I can. I am willing to spend all I
have. I am, indeed.”
“Well, spend away,—money, time, thought, kindness,—till you can fairly
say that you have done by everybody as you would be done by! It will be
time enough then to think what next. And, first, about these cottages of
yours. If no more people are to die in them, murdered by filth and damp,
you have no time to lose. You must not sit here, talking remorse, and
planning fine deeds, but you must set the work going this very day.
Come! let us go and see.”
Farmer Neale walked rather feebly through the hall: so Mr. Kirby called
him into the parlour, and gave him a glass of wine. Still, as they went
down the street, one man observed to another, that Neale looked ten
years older in a day. He looked round him, however, with some signs of
returning spirits, when he saw the boys at their street-cleaning, and
observed, that hereabouts things looked wholesome enough.
“Mere outside scouring,” said Mr. Kirby. “Better than dirt, as far as it
goes; unless, indeed, it makes us satisfied to have whited sepulchres
for dwellings. Come and see the uncleanness within.”
Mr. Kirby did not spare him. He took him through all the seven cottages,
for which he had extorted extravagant rents, without fulfilling any
conditions on his own part. He showed him every bit of broken roof, of
damp wall, of soaked floor. He showed him every heap of filth, every
puddle of nastiness caused by there being no drains, or other means of
removal of refuse. He advised him to make a note of every repair needed;
and, when he saw that Neale’s hand shook so that he could not write,
took the pencil from his hand, and did it himself. Two of the seven
cottages he condemned utterly: and Neale eagerly agreed to pull them
down, and rebuild them with every improvement requisite to health. To
the others he would supply what was wanting, and especially drainage.
They stood in such a cluster that it was practicable to drain them all
into a gully of the rock which, by being covered over, by a little
building up at one end, and a little blasting at one side, might be made
into a considerable tank, which was to be closed by a tight-fitting, and
very heavy slab at top. Mr. Kirby conceded so much to the worldly spirit
of the man he had to deal with, as to point out that the manure thus
saved would so fertilise his fields as soon to repay the cost of this
batch of drainage. Neale did not care for this at the moment. He was too
sore at heart at the spectacle of these cottages and their inmates,—too
much shaken by remorse and fear,—for any idea of profit and loss: but
Mr. Kirby thought it as well to point out the fact, as it might help to
animate the hard man to proceed in a good work, when his present melting
mood should be passing away.
“Well: I think this is all we can do to-day,” said Mr. Kirby, as they
issued from the seventh cottage. “The worst of it is, the workmen from
O—— will not come,—I am afraid no builder will come, even to make an
estimate—till we are declared free of fever. But there is a good deal
that your own people can do.”
“They can knock on a few slates before dark, Sir; and those windows can
be mended to-day. I trust, Mr. Kirby, you will give me encouragement;
and not be harder than you can help.”
“Why, Neale; the thing is this. You do not hold your doom from my hand;
and you ought not to hang upon my words. You come to me to tell me what
you feel, and to ask what I think. All I can do is to be honest with
you, and (as indeed I am) sorry for you. Time must do the rest. If you
are now acting well from fear of the fever only, time will show you how
worthless is the effort; for you will break off as soon as the fright
has passed away. If you really mean to do justly and love mercy, through
good and bad fortune, time will prove you there, too: and then you will
see whether I am hard, or whether we are to be friends. This is my view
of the matter.”
Neale touched his hat, and was slowly going away, when Mr. Kirby
followed him, to say one thing more.
“It may throw light to yourself, on your own state of mind, to tell you
that it is quite a usual one among people who have deeply sinned, when
any thing happens to terrify them. Histories of earthquakes and plagues
tell of people thinking and feeling as you do to-day. I dare say you
think nobody ever felt the same before; but you are not the only one in
Bleaburn.”
“Indeed, Sir!” exclaimed Neale, exceedingly struck.
“Far from it. A person who has often robbed your poultry-yard, and taken
your duck eggs, thought that I was preaching at him, last Sunday; though
I knew nothing about it. He wished to make reparation; and he asked me
if I thought you would forgive him. Do you really wish to know my
answer? I told him I thought you would not: but that he must confess and
make reparation, nevertheless.”
“You thought I should not forgive him?”
“I did: and I think so now, thus far. You would say and believe that you
forgave him: but, at odd times, for years to come, you would show him
that you had not forgotten it, and remind him that you had a hold over
him. If not,—if I do you injustice in this, I should——”
“You do not, Sir. I am afraid what you say is very true.”
“Well, just think it over, before he comes to you. This is the only
confession made to me which it concerns you to hear: but I assure you, I
believe there is not an evil doer in Bleaburn that is not sick at heart
as you are; and for the same reason. We all have our pains and troubles;
and yours may turn out a great blessing to you,—or a curse, according as
you persevere or give way.”
Neale said to himself as he went home, that Mr. Kirby had surely been
very hard. If a man hanged for murder was filled with hope and triumph,
and certainty of glory, there must be some more speedy comfort for him
than the pastor had held out. Yet, in his inmost heart, he felt that Mr.
Kirby was right; and he could not for the life of him, keep away from
him. He managed to meet him every day. He could seldom get a word said
about the state of his mind; for Mr. Kirby did not approve of people’s
talking of their feelings,—and especially of those connected with
conscience: but in the deeds which issued from conscientious feelings,
he found cordial assistance given. And Farmer Neale sometimes fancied
that he could see the time,—far as it was ahead—when Mr. Kirby and he
might be, as the pastor had himself said,—friends.
The amount of confession and remorse opened out to the pastor was indeed
striking, and more affecting to him than he chose to show to anybody but
his wife; and not even to her did he tell many of the facts. The
mushroom resolutions spawned in the heat of panic were offensive and
discouraging to him: but there were better cases than these. A man who
had taken into wrath with a neighbour about a gate, and had kept so for
years, and refused to go to church lest he should meet him there, now
discovered that life is too short for strife, and too precarious to be
wasted in painful quarrels. A little girl whispered to Mr. Kirby that
she had taken a turnip in his field without leave, and got permission to
weed the great flower-bed without pay, to make up for it. Simpson and
Sally asked him to marry them; and for poor Sally’s sake, he was right
glad to do it. They were straightforward enough in their declaration of
their reasons. Simpson thought nobody’s life was worth a halfpenny now,
and he did not wish to be taken in his sins: while Sally said it would
be worse still if the innocent baby was taken for its parents’ sin. They
had to hear the publication of banns, at a time when other people were
thinking of anything but marriage; and, when the now disused church was
unlocked to admit them to the altar,—just themselves and the clerk,—it
was very dreary; but they immediately after felt the safer and better
for it. Sally thought the Good Lady would have gone to church with her,
if she had been here; and she wished she could let her know that Simpson
had fulfilled his promise at last. Other people besides Sally wished
they could let the Good Lady know how they were going on;—how frost came
at last, in January, and stopped the fever;—how families who had lived
crowded together now spread themselves into the empty houses; and how
there was so much room that the worst cottages were left uninhabited, or
were already in course of demolition, to make airy spaces, or afford
sites for better dwellings; and how it was now certain that above
two-thirds of the people of Bleaburn had perished in the fever, or by
decline, after it. But they did not think of getting anybody who could
write to tell all this to the Good Lady: nor did it occur to them that
she might possibly know it all. The men and boys collected pretty spars
for her; and the women and girls knitted gloves and comforters, and made
pincushions for her, in the faith that they should some day see her
again. Meanwhile, they talked of her every day.