THE GREEN YULE.
The frost broke suddenly, and was succeeded by damp, close,
unseasonable weather, continuing up to Christmas, and giving the
"green yule" which the proverb says "makes a fat churchyard." That
proverb was justified sadly enough at North Aston, for typhus set in
among the low-lying cottages, and, as in olden times, when jail-fever
struck the lawyer at the bar and the judge on the bench in stern
protest against the foulness they fostered, so now the sins of the
wealthy landlords in suffering such cottages as these in the bottom
to exist reacted on their own class, and the fever entered other
dwellings beside those of the peasants.
Two of the gentry were struck down by it--Alick Corfield and the new
occupant of Lionnet, that Mr. Gryce who never went to church, and who
was assumed in consequence to have neither a soul to be saved by God
nor a heart to be touched by man. And these were just the two who,
according to the theory of the good or evil of a man's deeds returned
to him in kind, had the most reason to expect exemption. For Alick had
spent his strength in visiting the sick as a faithful pastor should,
and Mr. Gryce had taken them material help with royal abundance. Both
together they had to pay the price of principle, always an expensive
luxury, and never personally so safe a card to play in the game of
life as selfishness. For virtue has not only to be contented with its
own reward, as we constantly hear, but has to accept punishment for
its good deeds, vice for the most part carrying off the blue ribbons
and the gold medals, while poor virtue, shivering in the corner, gets
fitted with the fool's cap or is haled into the marketplace to be
pelted in the pillory. As was seen now in North Aston.
The rector, who never went into an infected cottage nor suffered
a parishioner to stand between the wind and his security, kept his
portly strength and handsome flesh intact, but Alick nearly lost his
life as the practical comment on his faithful ministry; and Mr. Gryce,
who, if he did not carry spiritual manna wherewith to feed hungry
souls, did take quinine and port wine, money and comforting substances
generally, for half-starved aching bodies, was also laid hold of by
that inexorable law which knows nothing about providential immunities
from established consequences on account of the good motives of the
actors. This would have been called heresy by the North Astonian
families, who professed to trust themselves to superior care, but none
the less used Condy's Fluid as a means whereby the work of Providence
might be rendered easier to it, nor disdained precipitate flight from
the protection in which they all said dolefully they believed. But
there is a wide difference between saying and doing, and men who are
shocked by words of frank unbelief find faithless deeds both natural
and in reason.
In spite, then, of that expressed trust in Providence which is part
of the garniture of English respectability, a great fear fell on the
North Aston gentry when these two of their own circle were attacked.
The fever, while it had confined itself to the ill-drained,
picturesque little cottages below, was lamentable enough, but not more
than lamentable on the broad platform of a common humanity; and those
who had lost nothing told those who had lost all that they must bear
their cross with patience, seeing that it was the divine will that it
should be so. Now, when the fiery epidemic had come upon the gentry
face to face in their homes, it was a monster from which they must
flee without delay, for no one knew whose house was safe, nor for how
long his own might remain uninfected.
Mrs. Harrowby and her daughters went off to Cheltenham two days after
Alick was announced as "down," to find there the security of
living which had failed them here. They were people of the highest
respectability--people who are the very pith and marrow of English
social virtue; but they had not been touched with the divine fire of
self-sacrifice for humanity, and they had no desire to hush the groans
of the afflicted if they thereby ran the risk of having to gnash their
own teeth. They could do no good at home. As Mrs. Harrowby said, as
one propounding a self-evident paradox, how could they go and see the
sick or help to nurse ploughmen and their children? They would only
catch the fever themselves, and so spread it still farther. And every
one knows what a wicked thing that is to do. Cook had orders to supply
a certain amount of soup and wine when asked for, which was more to
the purpose than any mere sentimental kindness, of no use to the one
and highly dangerous to the other; and as Edgar had a great deal to do
in the house and stables, it was as well, she said with the air of one
undergoing something disagreeable for high principles, to get out of
his way and leave him to his bricks and mortar undisturbed. Gentlemen,
she said, as the clamp holding all together, do not like to be
interfered with in their own domain. That fever in the bottom was such
an admirable lever of womanly good sense! So they went and enjoyed
themselves at Cheltenham as much as it was in the Harrowby nature to
do, and even Josephine's kind heart consoled itself in the Pump-room
while their miserable tenants at home sickened and died as comfortably
as circumstances would allow.
The Fairbairns, too, found themselves obliged to pay a long-promised
visit to London now on the instant, and swept out of the place with
even more than their characteristic promptitude; and the rector would
have given up his charge to a substitute if he could. But floating
clerical labor was just then scarce, and he could not find any one
to take his place in the Valley of the Shadow, though he offered the
liberal terms which are dictated by fear. He sent away his wife and
daughter, but he himself was bound to his post, and had to make the
best of the bad bit of cord that held him. He used to say with his
grand manner of martyrdom that, whatever he suffered, he must pull
the laboring-oar to the end, and attend to the sheep committed to his
charge. And he said it so often that he got at last to believe in his
own devotion. All the same, that laboring-oar of his pulled nothing
heavier than a cock-boat, and in waters no stormier than a duck-pond;
and when his sheep had the rot he was too delicate about the hands
to meddle with them. He preached to the living and he buried the dead
surrounded by all the protective appliances that science has devised
or money can supply. When the epidemic was over he too talked of
Providence and his trust therein, and how he had been mercifully
spared as his reward.
Mrs. Birkett's native indolence would have kept her at home, well
fumigated and isolated, even in such a strait of fear and danger as
this in which they all were, and Adelaide was racked with torment at
leaving Leam unwatched and unhindered in the same place as Edgar; yet,
being more afraid of the fever than even of a potential rival, she
agreed with her father that in justice to themselves they ought to go
now at once; and Pace, who was to remain to take care of the rector,
packed up their best dresses, and sent them off with Adelaide's maid
shared between them. She prophesied, however, that their things would
all be spoiled before they returned, and then they would know her
value. As Mr. Dundas elected to remain at home, not being afraid of
infection and being tired of travel, Mrs. Birkett insisted on
taking little Fina with her. This was her contribution to the sum
of philanthropy and self-sacrifice in the world, and it was not
despicable; for Fina was restless and only six years of age, and Mrs.
Birkett was indolent and soon tired.
Thus, the whole society of the place was reduced now to the rector,
Mr. Dundas and Leam, with Edgar Harrowby left alone at the Hill. The
Corfields did not count, because of Alick's illness, by which they
were put in quarantine; and if Mr. Gryce at Lionnet had not been the
cipher he was, his illness too would have disbarred him.
There was nothing of the saint by nature nor of the instinctive
philanthropist about Leam. She was too concentrated for general
benevolence, and men and women whom she did not know were little more
than symbols to her. When she loved it was with her whole heart, her
whole being: failing this kind of love, she had but weak affections
and no curiosity, in which much of our ordinary charity consists. When
the servants told her of such and such distressing circumstances, she
was sorry because they were sorry, not because she realized in her own
emotions the troubles she did not share or see. When prompted she sent
improper things in the way of diet and useless things in the way
of dress for the benefit of the poor fever patients--and she sent
generously--but it never occurred to her as possible that she should
go to see them in their own homes. When we read of a cyclone in China
which has killed half a hundred mandarins and a small army of coolies,
we realize the sorrow of the survivors no more than we realize the
distress of a disturbed ant-hill; and Leam's attitude of mind toward
the poor of her native village was precisely the same as ours toward
the Chinese killed in a cyclone or the ants murdered in their hill.
But she went daily to Steel's Corner, because she knew the Corfields
and in her own way liked Alick. Mrs. Corfield assured her there was
no danger, not a particle, with her free use of disinfectants and her
cunning devices of ventilation. And Leam believed her, and acted on
her belief, which gave her a false look of heroism and devotion that
won the heart of poor Pepita's "crooked stick" for ever. She thought
it so good of the girl, so brave and unselfish; and you could scarcely
have expected such nice feeling from Leam, now could you? she used
to ask her husband half a dozen times a day, ringing the changes
on Leam's good qualities as no one in the place had ever rung them
before, and disturbing the poor doctor in his calculations on the
varying strength of henbane and aconite till he wished that Leam
Dundas had never been born. Mrs. Corfield was just as wrong in
ascribing heroic qualities to the girl for her daily visits to ask
after Alick as she had been when she had credited her with moral
faults because of her intellectual ignorance. She was not afraid
because she knew nothing about infection, and had therefore the
boldness of ignorance, and she went daily to ask after Alick because
she somehow slipped into the groove of doing so; and a groove was
a great thing to conservative Leam. Nevertheless, she was really
concerned at the illness of her first North Astonian friend, and
wished that he would soon get well. She never thought that if he died
she would be rid of the only person who knew her deadly secret. Leam
was not one who would care to buy her own safety at the price of
another's destruction; and, more than this, she was not afraid that
Alick would betray her.
This, then, was the condition of things at North Aston at this moment:
the villagers dying of fever in the bottom, the families seeking
safety in flight, Leam going daily to Steel's Corner to ask after
Alick and sit for precisely half an hour with Mrs. Corfield, and Edgar
not so much taken up with bricks and mortar as not to understand times
and habits, and therefore, through that understanding, seeing her for
some part of every day. And the more he saw of her the more he yearned
to see, and the stronger grew her strange fascination over him. To
him, at least, the fever had not been an unmitigated evil; and though
he was sometimes inclined to quarrel with the fact that Leam went
daily to Steel's Corner to inquire after Alick Corfield, yet, as he
got the grain and Alick only the husk, he submitted to the process by
which the best was winnowed to his side. As the gain of that winnowing
process became more evident he grew philosophically convinced that
nothing is so charming in a woman as faithful friendship for a sick
man, and that sitting daily for half an hour, always at exactly the
same time, with an afflicted mother is the most delightful act of
charity to be imagined.