IN THREE PARTS.—CHAPTER VIII.

The spectacle of carrying the Good Lady up to the brow was more terrifying to the people of Bleaburn than any of the funerals they had seen creeping along by the same path,—more even than the passage of the laden cart, with the pall over it, on the morning of the opening of the new burying-grounds. The people of Bleaburn, extremely ignorant, were naturally extremely superstitious. It was not only the very ignorant who were superstitious. The fever itself was never supposed to be more catching than a mood of superstition; and so it now appeared in Bleaburn. For many weeks past the Good Lady had been regarded as a sort of talisman in the people’s possession. She breathed out such cheerfulness wherever she turned her face, that it seemed as if the place could not go quite to destruction while she was in it. Some who would not have admitted to themselves that they held such an impression were yet infected with the common dismay, as well as with the sorrow of parting with her. If Mary had had the least idea of the probable effect of her departure, she would have been less admired by the Kirbys for her docility,—for she would certainly have insisted on staying where she was.

“I declare I don’t know what to do,” the doctor confessed in confidence to the clergyman. “Every patient I have is drooping, and the people in the street look like creatures under doom. The comet was bad enough; and, before we have well done with it, here is a panic which is ten times worse.”

“I tried to lend a hand to help you against the comet,” replied Mr. Kirby. “I think I may be of some use again now. Shall I tell them it is a clear case of idolatry?”

“Why, it is in fact so, Mr. Kirby; but yet, I shrink from appearing to cast the slightest disrespect on her.”

“Of course; of course. The thing I want to show them is what she would think,—how shocked she would be if she knew the state of mind she left behind.”

“Ah! if you can do that!”

“I will see about it. Now tell me how we are going on.”

The Doctor replied by a look, which made Mr. Kirby shake his head. Neither of them liked to say in words how awful was the state of things.

“It is such weather you see,” said the Doctor. “Damp and disagreeable as it is, this December is as warm as September.”

“Five-and-twenty sorts of flowers out in my garden,” observed Mr. Kirby. “I set the boys to count them yesterday. We shall have as many as that on Christmas-day. A thing unheard of!”

“There will be no Christmas kept this year, surely,” said the Doctor.

“I don’t know that. My wife and I were talking it over yesterday. We think * * Well, my boy,” to a little fellow who stood pulling his forelock, “what have you to say to me? I am wanted at home, am I? Is Mrs. Kirby there?”

The Doctor heard him say to himself, “Thank God!” when they saw the lady coming out of a cottage near. The Doctor had long suspected that the clergyman and his wife were as sensible of one another’s danger as the most timid person in Bleaburn was of his own; and now he was sure of it. Henceforth, he understood that they were never easy out of one another’s sight; and that when the clergyman was sent for from the houses he was passing, his first idea always was that his wife was taken ill. It was so. They were not people of sentiment. They had settled their case with readiness and decision, when it first presented itself to them; and they never looked back. But it did not follow that they did not feel. They agreed, with the smallest possible delay, that they ought to succeed to the charge of Bleaburn on Mr. Finch’s death; that they ought to place their boys at school, and their two girls with their aunt till Bleaburn should be healthy again; and that they must stand or fall by the duty they had undertaken. As for separating, that was an idea mentioned only to be dismissed. They now nodded across the little street, as Mrs. Kirby proceeded on her round of visits, and her husband went home, to see who wanted him there.

In the corner of the little porch was a man sitting, crouching and cowering as if in bodily pain. Mr. Kirby went up to him, stooped down to see his face (but it was covered with his hands), and at last ventured to remove his hat. Then the man looked up. It was a square, hard face, which from its make would have seemed immovable; but it was anything but that now. It is a strange sight, the working of emotion in a countenance usually as hard as marble!

“Neale!” exclaimed Mr. Kirby. “Somebody ill at the farm, I am afraid.”

“Not yet, Sir; not yet, Mr. Kirby. But Lord save us! we know nothing of how soon it may be so.”

“Exactly so: that has been the case of every man, woman, and child, hour by hour since Adam fell.”

“Yes, Sir; but the present time is something different from that. I came, Sir, to say * * I came, Mr. Kirby, because I can get no peace or rest, day or night; for thoughts, Sir; for thoughts.”

Mr. Kirby glanced round him. “Come in,” said he, “Come into my study.”

Neale followed him in; but instead of sitting down, he walked straight to the window, and seemed to be looking into the garden. Mr. Kirby, who had been on foot all the morning, sat down and waited, shaving away at a pen meanwhile.

284“On Sunday, Sir,” said Neale at last, in a whispering kind of voice, “you read that I have kept back the hire of the labourers that reaped down my fields, and that their cry has entered into the ears of the Lord.”

“That you kept back the hire of the labourer?” exclaimed Mr. Kirby, quickly turning in his seat, so as to face his visitor. He laid his hand on the pocket-bible on the table, opened at the Epistle of James, and, with his finger on the line, walked to the window with it.

“Yes, Sir, that is it,” said Neale. “I would return the hire I kept back,—(I can’t exactly say by fraud, for it was from hardness)—I would pay it all willingly now; but the men are dead. The fever has left but a few of them.”

“I see,” said Mr. Kirby. “I see how it is. You think the fever is dogging your heels, because the cries of your labourers have entered into the ears of the Lord. You want to buy off the complaints of the dead, and the anger of God, by spending now on the living. You are afraid of dying; and you would rather part with your money, dearly as you love it, than die; and so you are planning to bribe God to let you live.”

“Is not that rather hard, Sir?”

“Hard?—Is it true? that is the question.”

When they came to look closely into the matter, it was clear enough. Neale, driven from his accustomed methods and employments, and from his profits, and all his outward reliances, was adrift and panic-stricken. When the Good Lady was carried out of the hollow, the last security seemed gone, and the place appeared to be delivered over to God’s wrath; his share of which, his conscience showed him to be pointed out in the words of scripture which had so impressed his mind, and which were ringing in his ears, as he said, day and night.

“As for the Good Lady,” said Mr. Kirby, “I am sure I hope she will never hear how some of the people here regard her, after all she has done for them. If anything could bow her spirit, it would be that.” Seeing Neale stare in surprise, he went on. “One would think she was a kind of witch or sorceress; that there was some sort of magic about her; instead of her being a sensible, kind-hearted, fearless woman, who knows how to nurse, and is not afraid to do it when it is most wanted.”

“Don’t you think then, Sir, that God sent her to us?”

“Certainly; as he sent the Doctor, and my wife and me: as he sends people to each other whenever they meet. I am sure you never heard the Good Lady say that she was specially sent.”

“She is so humble,—so natural, Sir,—she was not likely to say such a thing.”

“Very true: and she is too wise to think it. No—there is nothing to be frightened about in her going away. She could have done no good here, while unable to walk or sit up; and she will recover better where she is gone. If she recovers, as I expect she will, she will come and see us; and I shall think that as good luck as you can do; not because she carries luck about with her, but because there is nothing we so much want as her example of courage, and sense and cheerfulness.”

“To be sure,” said Neale, in a meditative way, “she could not keep the people from dying.”

“No indeed,” observed Mr. Kirby; “you and some others took care that she should not.”

In reply to the man’s stare of amazement, Mr. Kirby asked:—

“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 285dead. 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 286forgive 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.