Several days passed, and there was no direct news of Enderby. Maria
never spoke of him, though many little intervals in Margaret's busy life
occurred when the friends were together, and Maria ought have taken
occasion to say anything she wished. It was clear that she chose to
avoid the subject. Her talk was almost entirely about the sick, for
whom she laboured as strenuously as her strength would permit. She
could not go about among them, nor sit up with the sufferers: but she
cooked good things over her fire for them, all day long; and she took to
her home many children who were too young to be useful, and old enough
to be troublesome in a sick house. Between her cooking, teaching, and
playing with the children, she was as fully occupied as her friends in
the corner-house, and perhaps might not really know anything about Mr
Enderby.
Each one of the family had caught glimpses of him at one time or
another. There was reason to think that he was active among Mr
Walcot's poor patients; and Hope had encountered him more than once in
the course of his rounds, when a few words on the business of the moment
were exchanged, and nothing more happened. Margaret saw him twice: once
on horseback, when he turned suddenly down a lane to avoid her; and at
the Rowlands' dining-room window, with Ned in his arms. She never now
passed that house when she could help it: but this once it was
necessary; and she was glad that Philip had certainly not seen her. His
back was half-turned to the window at the moment, as if some one within
was speaking to him. Each time, his image was so stamped in upon her
mind, that, amidst all the trials of such near neighbourhood without
intercourse, his presence in Deerbrook was, on the whole, certainly a
luxury. She had gained something to compensate for all her
restlessness, in the three glimpses of him with which she had now been
favoured. A thought sometimes occurred to her, of which she was so
ashamed that she made every endeavour to banish it. She asked herself
now and then, whether, if she had been able to sit at home, or take her
accustomed walks, she should not have beheld Philip oftener:--whether
she was not sadly out of the way of seeing him at the cottage in the
lane, and the other sordid places where her presence was necessary. Not
for this occasional question did she stay away one moment longer than
she would otherwise have done from the cottage in the lane; but while
she was there, it was apt to recur.
There she sat one afternoon, somewhat weary, but not dreaming of going
home. There lay the three sick creatures still. The woman was likely
to recover; the boy lingered, and seemed waiting for his father to go
with him. Platt had sunk very rapidly, and this day had made a great
change. Margaret had taken the moaning and restless child on her lap,
for the ease of change of posture: and she was now shading from his eyes
with her shawl, the last level rays of the sun which shone in upon her
from the window. She was unwilling to change her seat, for it seemed as
if the slightest movement would quench the lingering life of the child:
and there was no one to draw the window-curtain, the old woman having
gone to buy food in the village. Mrs Platt slept almost all the day
and night through, and she was asleep now: so Margaret sat quite still,
holding up her shawl before the pallid face which looked already dead.
Nothing broke the silence but the twitter of the young birds in the
thatch, and the mutterings of the sick man, whom Margaret imagined to be
somewhat disturbed by the unusual light that was in the room. It had
not been the custom of the sun to shine into any houses of late; and the
place full of yellow light, did not look like itself. She knew that in
a few minutes the sun would have set; and she hoped that then poor Platt
would be still. Meantime she appeared to take no notice, but sat with
her eyes fixed on the boy's face, marking that each sigh was fainter
than the last. At length a louder sound than she had yet heard from the
sick man, made her look towards him; and the instant throb of her heart
seemed to be felt by the child, for he moved his head slightly. Platt
was trying to support himself upon his elbow, while in the other shaking
hand, he held towards her her turquoise ring. She remembered her
charge, and did not spring to seize it; but there was something in her
countenance that strongly excited the sick man. He struggled to rise
from his bed, and his face was fierce. Margaret spoke gently--as calmly
as she could--told him she would come presently--that there was no
hurry, and urged him to lie down till she could put the child off her
lap; but her voice failed her, in spite of herself; for now, at last,
she recognised in Platt the tall woman. This was the look which had
perplexed her more than once.
"Patience! a little further patience!" she said to herself, as she saw
the ring still trembling in the sick man's hand, and felt one more sigh
from the little fellow on her lap. No more patience was needed. This
was the boy's last breath. His head fell back, and the sunlight, which
streamed in upon his half-closed eyes, could now disturb them no more.
Margaret gently closed them and laid the body on its little bed in the
corner, straightening and covering the limbs before she turned away.
She then gently approached the bed, and took her ring into a hand which
trembled little less than the sick man's own. She spoke calmly,
however. She strove earnestly to learn something of the facts: she
tried to understand the mutterings amidst which only a word here and
there sounded like speech. She thought, from the earnestness with which
Platt seized and pressed her hand, that he was seeking pardon from her;
and she spoke as if it were so. It grew very distressing--the
earnestness of the man, and the uncertainty whether his mind was
wandering or not. She wished the old woman would come back. She went
to the door to look for her. The old woman was coming down the lane.
Margaret put on her ring, and drew on her gloves, and determined to say
nothing about it at present.
"Mr Platt has been talking almost ever since you went," said Margaret;
"and I can make out nothing that he says. Do try if you can understand
him. I am sure there is something he wishes me to hear. There is no
time to lose, I am afraid. Do try."
The woman coaxed him to lie down, and then turning round, said she
thought he wanted to know what o'clock it was.
"Is that all? Tell him that the sun is now setting. But if you have a
watch, that will show more exactly. Are you sure you have no watch in
the house?"
The old woman looked suspiciously at her, and asked her what made her
suppose that poor folks had watches, when some gentlefolks had none?
Margaret inquired whether a watch was not a possession handed down from
father to son, and sometimes found in the poorest cottages. She
believed she had seen such at Deerbrook. The old woman replied by
saying, she believed Margaret might have understood some few things
among the many the poor sick creature had been saying. Not one,
Margaret declared; but it was so plain that she was not believed, that
she had little doubt of Hester's watch having been harboured in this
very house, if it was not there still.
The poor boy, who had had little care from his natural guardians while
alive from the hour of his being doomed by the fortune-teller, was now
loudly mourned as dead. Yet the mourning was strangely mixed with
exultation at the fortune-teller having been right in the end. The
mother, suddenly awakened, groaned and screamed, so that it was fearful
to hear her. All efforts to restore quiet were in vain. Margaret was
moved, shocked, terrified. She could not keep her own calmness in such
a scene of confusion: but, while her cheeks were covered with tears,
while her voice trembled as she implored silence, she never took off her
glove. In the midst of the tumult, Platt sank back and died. The
renewed cries had the effect of bringing some neighbours from the end of
the lane. While they were there, Margaret could be of no further use.
She promised to send coffins immediately--that stage of pestilence being
now reached when coffins were the first consideration--and then slipped
out from the door into the darkness, and ran till she had turned the
corner of the long lane. She usually considered herself safe abroad,
even in times like these, as she carried no property of value about with
her: but now that she was wearing her precious ring again, she felt too
rich to be walking alone in the dark.
She did not slacken her pace till she approached lights and people; and
then she was glad to stop for breath. She could not resist going first
to Maria, to show her the recovered treasure; and this caused her to
direct her steps through the churchyard. It was there that she came in
view of lights and people; and under the limes it was that she stopped
for breath. The churchyard was now the most frequented spot in the
village. The path by the turnstile was indeed grown over with grass:
but the great gate was almost always open, and the ground near it was
trodden bare by the feet of many mourners. Funeral trains--trains which
daily grew shorter, till each coffin was now followed only by two or by
three--were passing in from early morning, at intervals, till sunset,
and now might be often seen by torchlight far into the night. The
villager passing the churchyard wall might hear, in the night air, the
deep voice of the clergyman announcing the farewell to some brother or
sister, committing "ashes to ashes, and dust to dust." There was no
disturbance now from boys leaping over the graves, or from little
children, eager to renew their noisy play. Such of the young villagers
as remained above ground appeared to be silenced and subdued by the
privation, the dreariness, the neglect, of these awful days: they looked
on from afar, or avoided the spot. Instead of such, the observer of the
two funerals which were now in the churchyard, was a person quite at the
other extremity of life. Margaret saw the man of a hundred years, Jem
Bird, the pride of the village in his way, seated on the bench under the
spreading tree, which was youthful in comparison with himself. He was
listlessly watching the black figures which moved about in the light of
a solitary torch, by an open grave, while waiting for the clergyman who
was engaged with the group beyond.
"You are late abroad, Mr Bird," said Margaret. "I should not have
looked for you here so far on in the evening."
"What's your will?" said the old man.
"Grandfather won't go home ever, till they have done here," said a
great-grandchild of the old man, running up from his amusement of
hooting to the owls in the church tower. "They'll soon have done with
these two, and then grandfather and I shall go home. Won't we, granny?"
"Does it not make you sad to see so many funerals?" said Margaret,
sitting down on the bench beside him.
"Ay."
"Had you not better stay at home than see so many that you knew laid in
the ground?"
"Does he understand?" she asked aside of the boy. "Does he never answer
but in this way?"
"Oh! he talks fast enough sometimes. It is just as you happen to take
him."
Margaret was curious to know what were the meditations among the tombs
of one so aged as this man: so she spoke again.
"I have heard that you knew this place before anybody lived in it: and
now you seem likely to see it empty again."
"It was a wild place enough in my young time," said Jem, speaking now
very fluently. "There was nothing of it but the church; and that was
never used, because it had had its roof pulled off in the wars. There
was only a footpath to it through the fields then, and few people went
nigh it--except a few gentry that came a-pleasuring here, into the
woods. The owls and I knew it as well then as we do to-day, and nobody
else that is now living. The owls and I."
And the old man laughed the chuckling laugh which was all he had
strength for.
"The woods!" said Margaret. "Did the Verdon woods spread as far as this
church in those days? And were they not private property then?"
"It was all forest hereabouts, except a clear space round the church
tower. It might be thin sprinkled, but it was called forest. The place
where I was born had thorns all about it; and when I could scarce walk
alone, I used to scramble among the blossoms that made the ground white
all under those thorns. The birds that lived by the haws in winter were
prodigious. That cottage stood, as near as I can tell, where Grey and
Rowland's great granary is now. There used to be much swine in the
woods then; and many's the time they have thrown me down when I was a
young thing getting acorns. That was about the time of my hearing the
first music I ever heard--unless you call the singing of the birds music
(we had plenty of that), and the bells on the breeze from a distance,
when the wind was south. The first music (so to call it) that I heard
was from a blind fiddler that came to us. What brought him, I don't
know--whether he lost his way, or what; but he lost his way after he
left us. His dog seems to have been in fault: but he got into a pool in
the middle of the wood, and there he lay drowned, with one foot up on
the bank, when I went to see what the harking of the dog could be about.
He clutched his fiddle in drowning; and I remember I tried to get the
music out of it as it lay wet and broken on the bank, while father was
saying the poor soul must have been under the water now two days. So I
have reason to remember the first music I heard."
"You have got him talking now," said the grandchild, running off; and
presently the owls were heard hooting again.
"Whereabouts was this pool?" asked Margaret.
"It is a deep part of the brook, that in hot summers is left a pond. It
is there that the chief of the sliding goes on in winter now, in the
meadow. It is meadow now; but then the deer used to come down through
the wood to drink at the brook there. That is how the village got its
name."
"So you remember the time when the deer came down to drink at the brook!
How many things have happened since then! You have heard a great deal
of music since those days."
"Ay, there has been a good deal of fiddling at our weddings since that.
And we have had recruiting parties through in war times."
"And many a mother singing to her baby; and the psalm in the church for
so many years! Yes, the place has been full of music for long; but it
seems likely to be silent enough now."
"I began to think I should be left the last, as I was the first," said
the old man: "but they say the sickness is abating now, and that several
are beginning to recover. Pray God it may be so! First, after the wood
was somewhat cleared, there was a labourer's cottage or two--now
standing empty, and the folk that lived in them lying yonder. Then
there was the farmhouse; and then a carpenter came, and a wheeler. Then
there was a shop wanted; and the church was roofed in and used: and some
gentry came and sat down by the river side; and the place grew to what
it is. They say now, it is not near its end yet: but it is strange to
me to see the churchyard the fullest place near, so that I have to come
here for company."
And the old man chuckled again. As she rose to go, Margaret asked
whether he knew the Platts, who lived in the cottage in the lane.
"I know him to see to. Is he down?"
"He is dead and his child: but his wife is recovering."
"Ay, there's many recovering now, they say."
"Indeed! who?"
"Why, a many. But the fever has got into Rowland's house, they say."
Margaret's heart turned sick at hearing these words, and she hastily
pursued her way. It was not Philip, however, who was seized. He was in
the churchyard at this moment. She saw him walking quickly along the
turnstile path, slackening his pace only for a moment, as he passed the
funeral group. The light from the torch shone full upon his face--the
face settled and composed, as she knew it would not be if he were aware
who was within a few paces of him. She felt the strongest impulse to
show him her ring--the strongest desire for his sympathy in its
recovery: but an instant showed her the absurdity of the thought, and
she hung down her blushing head in the darkness.
From Maria she had sympathy, such as it was--sympathy without any faith
in Philip. She had from her also good news of the state of the village.
There were recoveries talked of; and there would be more, now that
those who were seized would no longer consider death inevitable. Mrs
Howell was ill; and poor Miss Nares was down with the fever, which no
one could wonder at: but Mr Jones and his son John were both out of
danger, and the little Tuckers were likely to do well. Mr James was
already talking of sending for his wife and sister-in-law home again, as
the worst days of the disease seemed to be past, and so many families
had not been attacked at all. It was too true that Matilda Rowland was
unwell to-day; but Mr Walcot hoped it was only a slight feverish
attack, which would be thought nothing of under any other
circumstances.--On the whole, Maria thought the neighbours she had seen
to-day in better spirits than at any time since the fever made its
appearance.
Margaret found more good news at home. In the first place, the door was
opened to her by Morris. Hester stood behind to witness the meeting.
She had her bonnet on: she was going with her husband to see Mrs
Howell, and make some provision for her comfort: but she had waited a
little while, in hopes that Margaret would return, and be duly
astonished to see Morris.
"You must make tea for each other, and be comfortable while we are
away," said Hester. "We will go now directly, that we may be back as
early as we can."
"I have several things to tell you," said Margaret, "when you return:
and one now, brother, which must not be delayed. Platt and his child
are dead, and coffins must be sent. The sooner the better, or we shall
lose the poor woman too."
Hope promised to speak to the undertaker as he went by.
"We have become very familiar with death, Morris, since you went away,"
said Margaret, as she obliged her old friend to sit down by the fire,
and prepared to make tea for both.
"That is why you see me here, Miss Margaret. Every piece of news I
could get of this place was worse than the last; and I could perceive
from your last letter, that you had sickness all about you; and I could
not persuade myself but that it was my duty to come and be useful, and
to take care of you, my dear, if I may say so."
"And now you are here, I trust you may stay--I trust we may be justified
in keeping you. We have meat every day now, Morris,--at least when we
have time to cook it. Since my brother has been attending so many of
Mr Jones's family, we have had meat almost every day."
"Indeed, my dear, I don't know how you could keep up without it, so busy
as I find you are among the sick;--busy night and day, my mistress tells
me, till the people have got to call you `the good lady.' You do not
look as if you had lost much of your natural rest: but I know how the
mind keeps the body up. Yours is an earnest mind, Margaret, that will
always keep you up: but, my dear, I do hope it has been an easy mind
too. You will excuse my saying so."
Margaret more than excused it, but she could not immediately answer.
The tears trembled in her eyes, and her lip quivered when she would have
spoken. Morris stroked her hair, and kissed her forehead, as if she had
been still a child, and whispered that all things ended well in God's
own time.
"Oh, yes! I know," said Margaret. "Has Hester told you how prosperous
we are growing? I do not mean only about money. We are likely to have
enough of that too, for my brother's old patients have almost all sent
for him again: but we care the less about that from having discovered
that we were as happy with little money as with much. But it is a
satisfaction and pleasure to find my brother regarded more and more as
he ought to be: and yet greater to see how nobly he deserves the best
that can be thought of him."
"He forgives his enemies, no doubt, heaping coals of fire on their
heads."
"You will witness it Morris. You will see him among them, and it will
make your heart glow. Poor creatures! I have heard some of them own to
him, from their sick beds, with dread and tears, that they broke his
windows, and slandered his name. Then you should see him smile when he
tells them that is all over now, and that they will not mistake him so
much again."
"No, never. He has shown himself now what he is."
"He sat up two nights with one poor boy who is now likely to get
through; and in the middle of the second night, the boy's father got up
from his sick bed in the next room, and came to my brother, to say that
he felt that ill luck would be upon them all, if he did not confess that
he put that very boy behind the hedge, with stones in his hand, to throw
at Edward, the day he was mobbed at the almshouses. He was deluded by
the neighbours, he said, into thinking that my brother meant ill by the
poor."
"They have learned to the contrary now, my dear. And what does Sir
William Hunter say of my master, now-a-days? Do you know?"
"There is very little heard of Sir William and Lady Hunter at present--
shut up at home as they are. But Dr Levitt, who loves to make peace,
you know, and tell what is pleasant, declares that Sir William Hunter
has certainly said that, after all, it does not so much signify which
way a man votes at an election, if he shows a kind heart to his
neighbours in troublesome times."
"Sir William Hunter has learned his lesson then, it seems, from this
affliction. I suppose he sees that one who does his duty as my master
does at a season like this, is just the one to vote according to his
conscience at an election. But, my dear, what sort of a heart have
these Hunters got, that they shut themselves up as you say?"
"They give their money freely: and that is all that we can expect from
them. If they have always been brought up and accustomed to fear
sickness, and danger, and death, we cannot expect that they should lose
their fear at a time like this. We must be thankful for what they give;
and their money has been of great service, though there is no doubt that
their example would have been of more."
"One would like to look into their minds, and see how they regard my
master there."
"They regard him, no doubt, so far rightly as to consider him quite a
different sort of person from themselves, and no rule for them. So far
they are right. They do not comprehend his satisfactions and ease of
mind; and it is very likely that they have pleasures of their own which
we do not understand."
"And they are quite welcome, I am sure, my dear, as long as they do not
meddle with my master's name. That is, as he says, all over now. After
this, however, the people in Deerbrook will be more ready to trust in my
master's skill and kindness than in Sir William Hunter's grandeur and
money, which can do little to save them in time of need."
Margaret explained how ignorantly the poor in the neighbourhood had
relied on the fortune-tellers, who had only duped them; how that which
would have been religion in them if they had been early taught, and
which would have enabled them to rely on the only power which really can
save, had been degraded by ignorance into a foolish and pernicious
superstition. Morris hoped that this also was over now. She had met
some of these conjurors on the Blickley road; and seen others breaking
up their establishment in the lanes, and turning their backs upon
Deerbrook. Whether they were scared away by the mortality of the place,
or had found the tide of fortune-telling beginning to turn, mattered
nothing as long as they were gone.
The tea-table was cleared, and Morris and Margaret were admiring the
baby as he slept, when Hester and her husband returned. Mrs Howell was
very unwell, and likely to be worse. All attempts to bring Miss Miskin
to reason, and induce her to enter her friend's room, were in vain. She
bestowed abundance of tears, tremors, and foreboding on Mrs Howell's
state and prospects, but shut herself up in a fumigated apartment, where
she promised to pray for a good result, and to await it. The maid was a
hearty lass, who would sit up willingly, under Hester's promise that she
should be relieved in the morning. The girl's fear was of not being
able to satisfy her mistress, whom it was not so easy to nurse as it
might have been, from her insisting on having everything arranged
precisely as it was in her poor dear Howell's last illness. As Miss
Miskin had refused to enter the chamber, Hester had been obliged to
search a chest of drawers for Mr Howell's last dressing-gown, which
Miss Miskin had promised should be mended and aired, and ready for wear
by the morning.
"Margaret!" cried Hester, as her sister was lighting her candle. The
exclamation made Edward turn round, and brought back Morris into the
parlour after saying `Good-night.' "Margaret! your ring?"
There was as much joy as shame in Margaret's crimson blush. She let her
sister examine the turquoise, and said:
"Yes, this is the boon of to-day."
"Edward's hundred pounds has come," said Hester: "but that is nothing to
this."
Margaret's eyes thanked her. She just explained that poor Platt had
been the thief, and had restored it to her before he died, and that she
could get no explanation, no tidings of Hester's watch; and she was
gone.
"Dr Levitt's early stir about this ring prevented its being disposed
of, I have no doubt," said Edward. "If so, it is yet possible that we
may recover your watch. I will speak to Dr Levitt in the morning."
"Dear Margaret!" said Hester. "She is now drinking in the hue of that
turquoise, and blessing it for being unchanged. She regards this
recovery of it as a good omen, I see; and far be it from us to mock at
such a superstition!"
As usual, when she was upon this subject, Hester looked up into her
husband's face: and as usual, when she spoke on this subject, he made no
reply.