Dr. Turnbull was the doctor who, it will be remembered, lived in the
square near the church. There was another doctor in Eastthorpe, Mr.
Butcher, of whom we have heard, but Dr. Turnbull's reputation as a doctor
was far higher than Mr. Butcher's. What Eastthorpe thought of Dr.
Turnbull as a man is another matter. Mr. Butcher was married, church-
going, polite, smiling to everybody, and when he called he always said,
"Well, and how are _we_?" in such a nice way, identifying himself with
his patient. But even Eastthorpe had not much faith in him, and in very
serious cases always preferred Dr. Turnbull. Eastthorpe had remarked
that Mr. Butcher's medicines had a curious similarity. He believed in
two classes of diseases--sthenic and asthenic. For the former he
prescribed bleeding and purgatives; for the latter he "threw in" bark and
iron, and ordered port wine. Eastthorpe thought him very fair for colds,
measles, chicken-pox, and for rashes of all sorts, and so did all the
country round. He generally attended everybody for such complaints, but
as Mr. Gosford said after his recovery from a dangerous attack, "when it
come to a stoppage, I thought I'd better have Turnbull," and Mr. Gosford
sent for him promptly.
Dr. Turnbull was born three or four years before the outbreak of the
French Revolution. He was consequently a little older than the great Dr.
Elliotson, whose memory some of us still piously cherish, and Dr.
Elliotson and he were devoted friends. Dr. Turnbull was tall, thin,
upright, with undimmed grey eyes and dark hair, which had hardly yet
begun to turn in colour, but was a little worn off his forehead. He had
a curiously piercing look in his face, so that it was impossible if you
told him an untruth not to feel that you were detected. He never joked
or laughed in the sickroom or in his consulting-room, and his words were
few. But what was most striking in him was his mute power of command, so
that everybody in contact with him did his bidding without any effort on
his part. He kept three servants--two women and a man. They were very
good servants, but all three had been pronounced utterly intractable
before they went to him. Master and mistress dared not speak to them;
but with Dr. Turnbull they were suppressed as completely as if he had
been Napoleon and they had been privates. He was kind to them, it is
true, but at times very severe, and they could neither reply to him nor
leave him. He did not affect the dress nor the manners of the doctors
who preceded him. He wore a simple, black necktie, a shirt with no
frill, and a black frock-coat. The poor worshipped him, as well they
might, for his generosity to them was unexampled, and he took as much
pains with them and was as kind to them as if they were the first people
in Eastthorpe. He was perhaps even gentler with the poor than with the
rich. He was very apt to be contemptuous, and to snarl when called to a
rich man suffering from some trifling disorder who thought that his
wealth justified a second opinion, but he watched the whole night through
with the tenderness of a woman by the bedside of poor Phoebe Crowhurst
when she had congestion of the lungs before she lived with Mrs. Furze. He
saved that girl and would not take a sixpence, and when the mother,
overcome with gratitude, actually fell on her knees before him and clung
to him and sobbed and could not speak, he lifted her up with a "Nonsense,
my good woman!" and quickly departed. He was a materialist, and
described himself as one: he disbelieved in what he called the
soap-bubble theory, that somewhere in us there is something like a
bubble, which controls everything, and is everything, and escapes
invisible and gaseous to some other place after death. Consequently he
never went to church. He was not openly combative, but Eastthorpe knew
his heresies, and was taught to shudder at them. His professionally
religious neighbours of course put him in hell in the future, but the
common people did not go so far as that, although they could not believe
him saved. They somehow confounded his denial of immortality with his
own mortality, and imagined he would be at an end when he was put into
the grave. As time wore on the attitude, even of the clergy, towards the
doctor was gradually changed. They hastened to recognise him on week-
days as he walked in his rapid, stately manner through the streets,
although if they saw him on Sundays they considered it more becoming to
avoid him. He was, as we have seen, a materialist, but yet he was the
most spiritual person in the whole district. He took the keenest
interest in science; he was generous, and a believer in a spiritualism
infinitely beyond that of most of his neighbours, for they had not a
single spiritual interest. He was spiritual in his treatment of disease.
He was before his age by half a century, and instead of "throwing in"
drugs after the fashion of Butcher, he prescribed fresh air, rest, and
change, and, above everything, administered his own powerful
individuality. He did not follow his friend Elliotson into mesmerism,
but he had a mesmerism of his own, subduing all terror and sanative like
light. Mr. Gosford was not capable of great expression, but he was
always as expressive as he could be when he told the story of that
dreadful illness.
"He come into the room and ordered all the physic away, and then he sat
down beside me, and it was just afore hay-harvest, and I was in mortal
fright, and I said to him, 'Oh, doctor, I shall die.' Never shall I
forget what I had gone through that night, for I'd done nothing but see
the grave afore me, and I was lying in it a-rotting. Well, he took my
hand, and he said, 'Why, for that matter, my friend, I must die too; but
there's nothing in it; you won't complain when you find out what death
is. You won't die yet, though, and you'll get this lot of hay in at any
rate; what a heavy crop it is!' and he opened the winder and looked out.
The way he spoke was wonderful, and what it was which come into me when
he said, '_I must die too_,' I don't know, but all my terrors went away,
and I lay as calm as a child. 'Fore God I did, as calm as a child, and I
felt the wind upon me across the meadow while he stood looking at it, and
I could almost have got up that minute. I warn't out of bed for a
fortnight, but I did go out into the hayfield, as he said."
Why did Dr. Turnbull come to Eastthorpe? Nobody ever knew while he
lived. The question had been put at least some thousands of times, and
all kinds of inquiries made, but with no result. The real reason,
discovered afterwards, was simply that he had bad health, and that he had
fled from temptation in the shape of a woman whom he loved, but whom
duty, as he interpreted it, forbade him to marry, because he considered
it wicked to run the risk of bringing diseased children into the world.
This was the man to whom Catharine went. Mrs. Furze went with her. He
was perfectly acquainted with Mrs. Furze, and had seen Catharine, but had
never spoken to her. Mrs. Furze told her story, which was that Catharine
had no appetite, and was wasting from no assignable cause. The doctor
sounded her carefully, and then sat down without speaking. There was
undoubtedly a weakness in one lung, but he was not satisfied. He knew
how difficult it is to get people to tell the real truth to a physician,
and that if a third person is present, it is impossible. He therefore
asked Mrs. Furze if she would step into the next room. "A girl," he
said, "will not say all she has to say even to her mother." Mrs. Furze
did not quite like it, but obeyed.
"Miss Furze," said the doctor, "I imagine you are a person who would not
like to be deceived: you have a slight tenderness in the chest; there is
no reasonable cause for alarm, but you will have to be careful."
Catharine's face lighted up a little when the last sentence was half
finished, and the careful observer noticed it instantly.
"That, however, is not the cause of your troubles: there is something on
your mind. I never make any inquiries in such cases, because I know if I
did I should be met with evasions."
Catharine's eyes were on the floor. After a long pause she said--
"I am wretched: I have no pleasure in life; that is all I can say."
"If there is no definite cause for it--mind, I say that--I may do
something to relieve your distress. When people have no pleasure in
living, and there is no concrete reason for it, they are out of health,
and argument is of no avail. If a man does not find that food and light
and the air are pleasant, it is of no use to debate with himself. Have
you any friends at a distance?"
"None."
"What occupation have you?"
"None."
"It is not often that people are so miserable that they are unable to
make others less miserable. If instead of thinking about yourself you
were to think a little about those who are worse, if you would just
consider that you have duties and attempt to do them, the effort might be
a mere dead lift at first, but it would do you good, and you would find a
little comfort in knowing at the end of the day that, although it had
brought no delight to you, it had through you been made more tolerable to
somebody. Disorders of the type with which you are afflicted are
terribly selfish. Mind, I repeat it, I presuppose nothing but general
depression. If it is more than that I can be of no use."
Catharine was dumb, and Dr. Turnbull's singular power of winning
confidence was of no avail to extract anything more from her.
"I am sorry you cannot leave home. I shall give you no medicine. With
regard to the chest, the single definite point, you know what precautions
to take; as to the nervous trouble, do not discuss, ponder, or even
directly attack, but turn the position, if I may so speak, by work and a
determination to be of some use. If you were tempted by what you call
wicked thoughts you would not nurse them. It is a great pity that people
are so narrow in their notions of what wicked thoughts are. Every
thought which maims you is wicked, horribly wicked, I call it. By the
way, going to another subject, that poor girl, Phoebe Crowhurst, who
lived at your house, is very ill again. She would like to see you."
Catharine left, and Mrs. Furze came in.
"Has anything unsettled your daughter lately?"
"No, nothing particular."
She thought of Tom, but to save Catharine's life she would not have
acknowledged that it was possible for a Catchpole to have power to
disturb a Furze. Had it been Mr. Colston now, the case would have been
different.
"She needs care, but there is nothing serious the matter with her. She
ought to go away, but I understand she has no friends at a distance with
whom she can stay. Give her a little wine."
"Any medicine?"
"No, none; I should like to see her again soon; good morning."
Phoebe's home was near Abchurch, and Catharine went over to Abchurch to
see her, not without remonstrance on the part of Mrs. Furze, Phoebe
having been discharged in disgrace. Her father was an agricultural
labourer, and lived in a little four-roomed, whitewashed cottage about a
mile and a half out of the village. The living-room faced the
north-east, the door opening direct on the little patch of garden, so
that in winter, when the wind howled across the level fields, it was
scarcely warmer indoors than outside, and rags and dish-clouts had to be
laid on the door-sill to prevent the entrance of the snow and rain. At
the back was a place, half outhouse, half kitchen, which had once had a
brick floor, but the bricks had disappeared. Upstairs, over the living-
room, was a bedroom, with no fireplace, and a very small casement window,
where the mother and three children slept, the oldest a girl of about
fourteen, the second a boy of twelve, and the third a girl of three or
four, for the back bedroom over the outhouse had been given up to Phoebe
since she was ill. The father slept below on the floor. Phoebe's room
also had no fireplace, and great patches of plaster had been brought down
by the rain on the south-west side. Just underneath the window was the
pigstye. Outside nothing had been done to the house for years. It was
not brick built, and here and there the laths and timber were bare, and
the thatch had almost gone. Houses were very scarce on the farms in that
part, and landlords would not build. The labourers consequently were
driven into Abchurch, and had to walk, many of them, a couple of miles
each way daily. Miss Diana Eaton, eldest daughter of the Honourable Mr.
Eaton, had made a little sketch in water-colour of the cottage. It hung
in the great drawing-room, and was considered most picturesque.
"Lovely! What a dear old place!" said the guests.
"It makes one quite enamoured of the country," exclaimed Lady Fanshawe,
one of the most determined diners-out in Mayfair. "I never look at a
scene like that without wishing I could give up London altogether. I am
sure I could be content. It would be so charming to get rid of
conventionality and be perfectly natural. You really ought to send that
drawing to the Academy, Miss Eaton."
That we should take pleasure in pictures of filthy, ruined hovels, in
which health and even virtue are impossible, is a strange sign of the
times. It is more than strange; it is an omen and a prophecy that people
will go into sham ecstasies over one of these pigstyes so long as it is
in a gilt frame; that they will give a thousand guineas for its light and
shade--light, forsooth!--or for its Prout-like quality, or for its
quality of this, that, and the other, while inside the real stye, at the
very moment when the auctioneer knocks down the drawing amidst applause,
lies the mother dying from dirt fever; the mother of six children
starving and sleeping there--starving, save for the parish allowance, for
the snow is on the ground and the father is out of work.
Crowhurst's wages were ten shillings a week, and the boy earned half a
crown, but in the winter there was nothing to do for weeks together. All
this, however, was accepted as the established order of things. It never
entered into the heads of the Crowhursts to revolt. They did not revolt
against the moon because she was sometimes full and lit everybody
comfortably, and at other times was new and compelled the use of
rushlights. It was so ordained.
Half a mile beyond the cottage was a chapel. It stood at a cross-road,
and no houses were near it. It had stood there for 150 years, gabled,
red brick, and why it was put there nobody knew. Round it were
tombstones, many totally disfigured, and most of them awry. The grass
was always long and rank, full of dandelions, sorrel, and docks,
excepting once a year in June when it was cut, and then it looked raw and
yellow. Here and there was an unturfed, bare hillock, marking a new
grave, and that was the only mark it would have, for people who could
afford anything more did not attend the chapel now. The last
"respectable family" was a farmer's hard by, but he and his wife had
died, and his sons and daughters went to church. The congregation, such
as it was, consisted nominally of about a dozen labourers and their wives
and children, but no more than half of them came at any one time. The
windows had painted wooden shutters, which were closed during the week to
protect the glass from stone-throwing, and the rusty iron gate was always
locked, save on Sundays. The gate, the door, and the shutters were
unfastened just before the preacher came, and the horrible chapel smell
and chapel damp hung about the place during the whole service. When
there was a funeral of any one belonging to the congregation the Abchurch
minister had to conduct it, and it was necessarily on Sunday, to his
great annoyance. Nobody could be buried on any other day, because work
could not be intermitted; no labourer could stay at home when wife or
child was dying; he would have lost his wages, and perhaps his
occupation. He thought himself lucky if they died in the night.
The chapel was "supplied," as it was called, by an Abchurch deacon or
Sunday-school teacher, who came over, prayed, preached, gave out hymns,
and went away. That was nearly all that Cross Lanes knew of the "parent
cause." The supplies were constantly being changed, and if it was very
bad weather they stayed at home. On very rare occasions the Abchurch
minister appeared on Sunday evenings in summer, but that was only when he
wanted rest, and could deliver the Abchurch sermon of the morning, and
could obtain a substitute at home.
Crowhursts had been buried at Cross Lanes ever since it existed, but the
present Crowhursts knew nothing of their ancestors beyond the generation
immediately preceding. What was there to remember, or if there was
anything worth remembering, why should they remember it? Life was blank,
blind, dull as the brown clay in the sodden fields in November;
nevertheless, the Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the
world shone into the Crowhurst cottage--that Light greater than all
lights which can be lit by priest or philosopher, as the sun is greater
than all our oil-lamps, gas, and candles. When Phoebe first had
congestion of the lungs, not a single note of murmuring at the trouble
caused escaped a soul in the household. The mother sat up with her at
night, and a poor woman half a mile off came in during the day and saw
that things went all straight. To be sure, there was Dr. Turnbull. It
was a long way out of his rounds, but he knew the Crowhursts well, and,
as we have said, he watched over Phoebe as carefully as if she had been
the daughter of a duke. Now Phoebe was ill again, but Dr. Turnbull was
again there, and although her cough was incessant, the care of father,
mother, brother, and sister was perfect in its tenderness, and their self-
forgetfulness was complete. It was not with them as with a man known to
the writer of this history. His wife, whom he professed to love, was
dying of consumption. "I do not deny she suffers," he said "but nobody
thinks of _me_." The sympathy of the agricultural poor with one another
is hardly credible to fine people who live in towns. If we could have a
record of the devotion of those women who lie forgotten under the turf
round country churches throughout England, it would be better worth
preserving than nine-tenths of our literature and histories. Surely in
some sense they still _are_, and their love cannot have been altogether a
thing of no moment to the Power that made them!
Catharine had never been to Phoebe's home before. At the Terrace she was
smart, attractive, and as particular as her mistress about her clothes.
Nobody ever saw Phoebe with untidy shoes or stockings, and even in the
morning, before she was supposed to be dressed, her little feet were as
neat as if she had nothing to do but to sit in a drawing-room. She was
now lying on a stump bedstead with a patchwork coverlet over her, and to
protect her from the draughts an old piece of carpet had been nailed on a
kind of rough frame and placed between her and the door. Catharine's
first emotion when she entered was astonishment and indignation. Therein
she showed her ignorance and stupidity. The owner of the cottage did not
force the Crowhursts to live in it. It was not he who directed that a
girl dying of consumption should lie close to a damp wall in a room eight
feet square with no ventilation. He had the cottage, the Crowhursts,
presumably, were glad to get it, and he conferred a favour on them.
"Oh, Miss Catharine," said Phoebe, "this is kind of you! To think of
your coming over from Eastthorpe to see me, and after what happened
between me and Mrs. Furze! Miss Catharine, I didn't mean to be rude, but
that Orkid Jim is a liar, and it's my belief that he's at the bottom of
the mischief with Tom. You haven't heard of Tom, I suppose, Miss?"
"Yes, he is in London. He is doing very well."
"Oh, I am very thankful. I am afraid you will find the room very close,
Miss. Don't stay if you are uncomfortable."
Catharine replied by taking a chair and sitting by the bedside. There
was somewhat in Phoebe's countenance, Catharine knew not what, but it
went to her heart, and she bent down and kissed her upon the forehead.
They had always been half-friends when Phoebe was at the Terrace. The
poor girl's eyes filled with tears, and a smile came over her face like
the sunshine following the shadow of a cloud sweeping over the hillside.
Mrs. Crowhurst came into the room.
"Why, mother, what are you doing here? You ought to be abed. Where is
Mrs. Dunsfold?"
"Mrs. Dunsfold is laid up with the rheumatics, my dear. But don't you
bother; we can manage very well. I will stay with you at night, and just
have a bit of sleep in the mornings. Your sister can manage after I've
seen to father's breakfast and while I'm a-lying down, and if she wants
me, she's only got to call."
The mother looked worn and anxious, as though, even with Mrs. Dunsfold's
assistance, her rest had been insufficient.
"Mrs. Crowhurst," said Catharine, "go to bed again directly. If you do
not, you will be ill too. I will stay with Phoebe, at least for
to-night, if anybody can be found to go to Eastthorpe to tell my mother I
shall not be home."
"Miss Catharine! to think of such a thing! I'm sure you shan't," replied
Mrs. Crowhurst; but Catharine persisted, and a message was sent by
Phoebe's brother, who, although so young, knew the way perfectly well,
and could be trusted.
The evening and the darkness drew on, and everything gradually became
silent. Excepting Phoebe's cough, not a sound could be heard save the
distant bark of some farmyard dog. As the air outside was soft and warm,
Catharine opened the window, after carefully protecting her patient.
Phoebe was restless.
"Shall I read to you?"
"Oh, please, Miss; but there is nothing here for you to read but the
Bible and a hymn-book."
"Well, I will read the Bible. What would you like?"
Phoebe chose neither prophecy, psalm, nor epistle, but the last three
chapters of St. Matthew. She, perhaps, hardly knew the reason why, but
she could not have made a better choice. When we come near death, or
near something which may be worse, all exhortation, theory, promise,
advice, dogma fail. The one staff which, perhaps, may not break under
us, is the victory achieved in the like situation by one who has preceded
us; and the most desperate private experience cannot go beyond the garden
of Gethsemane. The hero is a young man filled with dreams and an ideal
of a heavenly kingdom which he was to establish on earth. He is
disappointed by the time he is thirty. He has not a friend who
understands him, save in so far as the love of two or three poor women is
understanding. One of his disciples denies him, another betrays him, and
in the presence of the hard Roman tribunal all his visions are nothing,
and his life is a failure. He is to die a cruel death; but the
bitterness of the cup must have been the thought that in a few days--or
at least in a few months or years--everything would be as if he had never
been. This is the pang of death, even to the meanest. "He that goeth
down to the grave," says Job, "shall return no more to his house, neither
shall his place know him any more." A higher philosophy would doubtless
set no store on our poor personality, and would even rejoice in the
thought of its obliteration or absorption, but we cannot always lift
ourselves to that level, and the human sentiment remains. Catharine read
through the story of the conflict, and when she came to the resurrection
she felt, and Phoebe felt, after her fashion, as millions have felt
before, that this was the truth of death. It may be a legend, but the
belief in it has carried with it other beliefs which are vital.
The reading ceased, and Phoebe fell asleep for a little. She presently
waked and called Catharine.
"Miss Catharine," she whispered, drawing Catharine's hand between both
her own thin hands, "I have something to say to you. Do you know I loved
Tom a little; but I don't think he loved me. His mind was elsewhere;
I--saw where it was, and I don't wonder. I makes no difference, and
never has, in my thoughts,--either of him or of you. It will be better
for him in every way, and I am glad for his sake. But when I am gone and
I shan't feel ashamed at his knowing it--please give him my Bible; and
you may, if you like, put a piece of my hair in that last chapter you
have been reading to-night."
"Phoebe, my Phoebe, listen," said Catharine: "I shall never be Tom's
wife."
"Are you sure?"
"As sure as that I am here with my head on your pillow."
"I am sorry."
She then became silent, and so continued for two hours. Catharine
thought she was asleep, but a little after dawn her mother came into the
room. She knew better, and saw that the silence was not sleep, but the
insensibility of death. In a few minutes she hurried Catharine
downstairs, and when she was again admitted Phoebe lay dead, and her pale
face, unutterably peaceful and serious, was bound up with a white
neckerchief. The soul of the poor servant girl had passed away--only a
servant girl--and yet there was something in that soul equal to the sun
whose morning rays were pouring through the window. She lies at the back
of the meeting-house amongst her kindred, and a little mound was raised
over her. Her father borrowed the key of the gate every now and then,
and, after his work was over, cut the grass where his child lay, and
prevented the weeds from encroaching; but when he died, not long after,
his wife had to go into the workhouse, and in one season the sorrel and
dandelions took possession, and Phoebe's grave became like all the
others--a scarcely distinguishable undulation in the tall, rank herbage.