sanitary inspectors.—the pestilence.—the parson.—the doctor.—the squire and the schoolmaster.—desolation at the windmill.—the second advent.
i remember a “cholera year” in a certain big village. the activity of the sanitary authorities (and many and vain had been the efforts to rouse them to activity before) was, for them, remarkable. a good many heads of households died with fearful suddenness and not less fearful suffering. several nuisances were “seen to,” some tar-barrels were burnt, and the scourge passed by. not long ago a woman, whose home is in a court where some of the most flagrant nuisances existed, in talking to me, casually alluded to one of them. it had been ordered to be removed, she said, in the cholera year when the gentlemen were going round; but the cholera went away, and it remained among those things which were not “seen to,” and for aught i know flourishes still. she was a sensible and affectionate person. living away from her home at that time, she became anxious at once for the welfare of her relatives if they neglected to write to her. but she had never an anxiety on the subject of that unremedied abomination which was poisoning every breath they drew. that “the gentlemen who went round” felt it superfluous to have their orders carried out when strong men were no longer sickening and dying within two revolutions of the hands of the church clock will surprise no one who has had to do with local sanitary officers. they are like the children of israel, and will only do their duty under the pressure of a plague. the people themselves are more like the egyptians. plagues won’t convince them. a mother with all her own and her neighbors’ children sickening about her would walk miles in a burst shoe to fetch the doctor or a big bottle of medicine, but she won’t walk three yards farther than usual to draw her house-water from the well that the sewer doesn’t leak into. that is a fact, not a fable; and, in the cases i am thinking of, all medical remonstrance was vain. uneducated people will take any thing in from the doctor through their mouths, but little or nothing through their ears.
when such is the state of matters in busy, stirring districts, among shrewd artisans, and when our great seat of learning smells as it does smell under the noses of the professors, it is needless to say that the “black fever” found every household in the little village prepared to contribute to its support, and met with hardly an obstacle on its devastating path.
to comment on master salter’s qualifications for the post of sanitary inspector would be to insult the reader’s understanding. of course he owned several of the picturesque little cottages where the refuse had to be pitched out at the back, and the slops chucked out in front, and where the general arrangements for health, comfort, and decency were such as one must forbear to speak of, since, on such matters, our ears—heaven help us!—have all that delicacy which seems denied to our noses.
if the causes of the calamity were little understood, portents were plentifully noted. the previous winter had been mild. a thunderbolt fell in the autumn. there was a blight on the gooseberries, and master salter had a calf with two heads. as to the painter, a screech-owl had been heard to cry from his chimney-top, not three weeks before his death.
there was a pause of a day or so after master linseed died, and then victims fell thick and fast. children playing happily with their mimic boats on the open drain that ran lazily under the noontide sun, by the footpath of the main street, were coffined for their hasty burial before the sun had next reached his meridian. the tears were hardly dry in their parents’ eyes before these also were closed in their last sleep. the very aged seemed to linger on, but strong men sickened and died; and at the end of the week more than one woman was left sitting by an empty hearth, a worn-out creature whom death seemed only to have forgotten to take away.
at first there was a reckless disregard of infection among the neighbors. but, after one or two of these family desolations, this was succeeded by a panic, and even the noble charity which the poor commonly show to each other’s troubles failed, and no one could be got to nurse the sick or bury the dead.
now the rector was an old man. most of the parish officers were aged, and patriarchs in white smock frocks were as plentiful as creepers at the cottage doors. the healthy breezes and the dull pace at which life passed in the district seemed to make men slow to wear out. if the rector had profited by these features of the parish in health, it must be confessed that they had also had their influence on his career. he was a good man, and a learned one. he stuck close to his living, and he was benevolent. but he was not of those heroic natures who can resist the influence of the mental atmosphere around them; and in a dull parish, in a sleepy age, he had not been an active parson. some men, however, who cannot make opportunities for themselves, can do nobly enough if the chance comes to them; and this chance came to the rector in his sixty-ninth year, on the wings of the black fever. to quicken spiritual life in the soul of a master salter he had not the courage even to attempt; but a panic of physical cowardice had not a temptation for him. and so it came about that of four men who stayed the panic, by the example of their own courage, who went from house to house, and from sick-bed to sick-bed—who drew a cordon round the parish, and established kitchens and a temporary hospital, and nursed the sick, and encouraged the living, and buried the dead,—the most active was the old rector.
the other three were the parish doctor, squire ammaby, and the schoolmaster.
on the very first rumor of the epidemic, lady louisa had carried off amabel, and had gone with lady craikshaw to brighton. both the ladies were indignant with the squire’s obstinate resolve to remain amongst his tenants. in her alarm, lady louisa implored him to sell the property and buy one in ireland, which was lady craikshaw’s native country; and the list she contrived to run up of the drawbacks to the ammaby estate would have driven a temper less stolid than her husband’s to distraction.
when the fever broke out among the children, the schools were closed, and master swift devoted his whole time to laboring with the parson, the doctor, and the squire.
no part of the rector’s devotion won more affectionate gratitude from his people than a single act of thoughtfulness, by which he preserved a record of the graves of their dead. he had held firmly on to a decent and reverent burial, and, foreseeing that the poor survivors would be quite unable to afford gravestones, he kept a strict list of the dead, and where they were buried, which was afterwards transferred to one large monument, which was bought by subscription. he cut the village off from all communication with the outer world, to prevent a spread of the disease; but he sent accounts of the calamity to the public papers, which brought abundant help in money for the needs of the parish. and in these matters the schoolmaster was his right-hand man.
the disease was most eccentric in its path. having scourged one side only of the main street, it burst out with virulence in detached houses at a distance. then it returned to the village, and after lulls and outbreaks it ceased as suddenly as it began.
it was about midway in its career that it fell with all its wrath upon master lake’s windmill.
the mill stood in a healthy position, but the dwelling room was ill-ventilated, and there were defective sanitary arrangements, which master swift had anxiously pointed out to the miller. the plague had begun in the village, and the schoolmaster trembled for jan. but master lake was not to be interfered with, and, when the schoolmaster spoke of poison, thought himself witty as he replied,—
“it be a uncommon slow pison then, master swift.”
it must also be allowed that such epidemics, once started, do havoc in apparently clean houses and amongst well-fed people.
it was a little foster-sister of jan’s who sickened first. she died within two days. her burial was hasty enough, but mrs. lake had no time to fret about that, for a second child was ill. like many another householder, the poor windmiller was now ready enough to look to his drains, and so forth; but it may be doubted if the general stirring up of dirty places at this moment did not do as much harm as good. it was hot,—terribly hot. day after day passed without a breeze to cool the burning skins of the sick, and yet it was not sunshiny. people did say that the pestilence hung like a murky vapor above the district, and hid the sun.
trades were slack, corn-grinding amongst the rest, and master lake did the housework, helped by jan and abel. he was stunned by the suddenness and the weight of the calamity which had come to him. he was very kind to mrs. lake, but the poor woman was almost past any feeling but that which, as a sort of instinct or inspiration, guided a constant watching and waiting on her sick children. she never slept, and would not have eaten, but that master lake used his authority to force some food upon her. at this time jan’s chief occupations were cookery and dish-washing. his constant habit of observation made all the experiences of life an education for him; he had often watched his foster-mother prepare the family meals, and he prepared them now, for abel and the windmiller could not, and she was with the sick children.
before the second child died, two more fell ill on the same day. only abel and jan were still “about.” the mother moved like an automaton, and never spoke. now and then a deep sigh or a low moan would escape her, and the miller would move tenderly to her side, and say, “bear up, missus; bear up, my lass,” and then go back to his pipe and his cherry-wood chair, where he seemed to grow gray as he sat.
master swift came from time to time to the mill. he was everywhere, helping, comforting, and exhorting. some said his face shone with the light of another world, for which he was “marked.” others whispered that the strain was telling on him, and that it wore the look it had had in the brief insanity which followed his child’s death. but all agreed that the very sight of him brought help and consolation. the windmiller grew to watch for him, and to lean on him in the helplessness of his despair. and he listened humbly to the old man’s fervid religious counsels. his own little threads of philosophy were all blowing loose and useless in this storm of trouble.
the evening that master swift came up to arrange about the burial of the second child, he found the other two just dead. the first two had suffered much and been delirious, but these two had sunk painlessly in a few hours, and had fallen asleep for the last time in each other’s arms.
it did not lessen the force of master swift’s somewhat stern consolations that in all good faith he conveyed in them an expectation that the last day was at hand. many people thought so, and it was, perhaps, not unnatural. in these days, which were long years of suffering, they were shut off from the rest of humanity, and the village was the world to them,—a world very near its end. with death so busy, it seemed as if judgment could hardly linger long.
it is true that this did not form a part of the rector’s religious exhortations. but some good people were shocked by the tea-party that he gave to the young people of the place, and the games that followed it in the rectory meads, at the very height of the fever; though the doctor said it was better than a hogshead of medicine.
“to encourage low spirits in this panic is just to promote suicide, if ye like the responsibeelity of that,” said the doctor to master swift, who had confided his doubts as to the seemliness of the entertainment. “i tell ye there’s a lairge proportion of folk dies just because their neighbors have died before them, for the want of their attention being directed to something else. away wi’ ye, schoolmaster, and take your tuning-fork to ask the blessing wi’. what says the scripture, man? ‘the living, the living, he shall praise thee!’”
the doctor was a scotchman, and master swift always listened with sympathy to a north countryman. he was convinced, too, and took his tuning-fork to the meals, and led the grace.
nor could his expectation of the speedy end of all things restrain his instinctive anxiety and watchfulness for jan’s health. on the evening of that visit to the mill, he used some little manoeuvring to accomplish jan’s being sent back with him to the village, to arrange for the burial of the three children.
a glow of satisfaction suffused his rough face as he got jan out of the tainted house into the fresh evening air, though it paled again before that other look which was now habitual to him, as, waving his hand towards the ripening corn-fields, he quoted from one of mr. herbert’s loftiest hymns,—
“we talk of harvests,—there are no such things,
but when we leave our corn and hay.
there is no fruitful year but that which brings
the last and loved, though dreadful day.
oh, show thyself to me,
or take me up to thee!”
