It was a fine spring day when the Good Lady re-appeared at Bleaburn.
There she was, perfectly well, and glad to see health on so many of the
faces about her. Some were absent whom she had left walking about in the
strength of their prime; but others whom she had last seen lying
helpless, like living skeletons, were now on their feet, with a light in
their eyes, and some little tinge of colour in their cheeks. There were
sad spectacles to be seen of premature decrepitude, of dreadful sores,
of deafness, of lameness, left by the fever. There were enough of these
to have saddened the heart of any stranger entering Bleaburn for the
first time, but to Mary, the impression was that of a place risen from
the dead. There was much grass in the churchyard, and none in the
streets: the windows of the cottages were standing wide, letting it be
seen that the rooms were white-washed within. There was an indescribable
air of freshness and brightness about the whole place, which made her
feel and say that she hardly thought the fever could harbour there
again. As she turned into the lane leading to her aunt’s, the sound of
the hammer, and the chipping of stone were heard; and some workmen whom
she did not know, turned from their work of planing boards, to see why a
crowd could be coming round the corner. These were workmen from O——,
building Neale’s new cottages, in capital style. And, for a moment, two
young ladies entering from the other end, were equally perplexed as to
what the extraordinary bustle could mean. Their mother, however,
understood it at a glance, and hastened forward to greet the Good Lady,
sending a boy to fetch Mr. Kirby immediately. Mrs. Kirby’s dryness of
manner broke down altogether when she introduced her daughters to Mary.
“Let them say they have shaken hands with you,” said she, as she herself
kissed the hand she held.
It was not easy for Mary to spare a hand, so laden was she with
pincushions and knitted wares; but the Kirbys took them from her, and
followed in her train, till the Widow Johnson appeared on her threshold,
pale as marble, and grave as a monument, but well and able to hold out
her arms to Mary. Poor Jem’s excitement seemed to show that he was aware
that some great event was happening. His habits were the same as before
his illness, and he had no peace till he had shut the door when Mary
entered. Everybody then went away for the time; plenty of eyes, however,
being on the watch for the moment when the Good Lady should be visible
again.
In a few minutes, the movements of Jem’s head showed his mother that, as
she said, something was coming. Jem’s hearing was uncommonly acute: and
what he now heard, and what other people heard directly after, was a
drum and fife. Neighbour after neighbour came to tell the Johnsons what
their ears had told them already,—that there was a recruiting party in
Bleaburn again; and Jem went out, attracted by the music.
“It is like the candle to the moth to him,” said his mother. “I must go
and see that nobody makes sport of him, or gives him drink.”
“Sit still, Aunty; I will go. And there is Warrender, I see, and Ann. We
will take care of Jem.”
And so they did. Ann looked so meaningly at Mary, meantime, as to make
Mary look inquiringly at Ann.
“Only, Ma’am,” said Ann, “that Sally Simpson is standing yonder. She
does not like to come forward, but I know she would be pleased.”
“Her name is Simpson? How glad I am he has married her!” whispered Mary,
as she glanced at the ring which Sally was rather striving to show. “I
hope you are happy at last, Sally.”
“Oh, Ma’am, it is such a weight gone! And I do try to make him happy at
home, that he may never repent.”
Mary thought the doubt should be all the other way—whether the wife
might not be the most likely to repent having bound herself to a man who
could act towards her as Simpson had done. Widow Slaney was not to be
seen. The fife and drum had sent her to the loft. She came down to see
Mary; but her agitation was so great that it would have been cruelty to
stay. They heard her draw the bolt as they turned from the door.
“She does not like seeing Jack Neale any more than hearing the drum,”
observed the host of the Plough and Harrow, who had come forth to invite
the Good Lady in, ‘to take a glass of something.’ “That is Jack Neale,
Ma’am; that wooden-legged young man. He is married, though, for all his
being so crippled. The young woman loved him before; and she loves him
all the more now; and they married last week, and live at his father’s.
It must be a sad sight to his father; but he says no word about it.
Better not; for Britons must be loyal.”
“And why not?” said the Doctor, who had hastened in from the brow, on
seeing that something unusual was going forward below, and had ventured
to offer the Good Lady his arm, as he thought an old comrade in the
conflict with sickness and death might do.
“Why not?” said the Doctor. “We make grievous complaints of the fatality
of war; and it _is_ sad to see the maiming and hear of the slaughter.
But we had better spend our lamentations on a fatality that we can
manage. It would take many a battle of Albuera to mow us down, and hurt
us in sense and limb, as the fever has done.”
“Why, that is true!” cried some, as if struck by a new conviction.
“True, yes,” continued the Doctor. “I don’t like the sight of a
recruiting party, or the sound of the drum much better than the poor
woman in yonder house, who will die of heart-break after all—of horror
and pining for her son. But there is something that I like still less;
the first giddiness and trembling of the strong man, the sinking
feebleness of the young mother, the dimming of the infant’s eyes; and
the creeping fog along the river-bank, the stench in the hot weather,
and the damp in the cold, that tell us that fever has lodged among us. I
know then that we shall have, many times over, the slaughter of war,
without any comfort from thoughts of glory to ourselves or duty to our
country. There is neither glory nor duty in dying like vermin in a
ditch.”
“I don’t see,” said Warrender, “that the sergeant will carry off any of
our youngsters now. If he had come with his drum three months since,
some might have gone with him to get away from the fever, as a more
terrible thing than war; but at present I think he will find that death
has left us no young men to spare.”
And so it proved. The sergeant and his party soon marched up to the
brow, and disappeared, delivering the prophecy that Bleaburn would now
lose its reputation for eagerness to support king and country. And in
truth, Bleaburn was little heard of from that time till the peace.
Mary could not stay now. She had been detained very long from home—in
America—and somebody was waiting very impatiently there to give her a
new and happy home. This is said as if we were speaking of a real
person—and so we are. There was such a Mary Pickard; and what she did
for a Yorkshire village in a season of fever is TRUE.