It was ‘a green Yule,’ a Christmas like an April day, and even the lengthening days and strengthening cold of January attaining to nothing more than three slight hoar-frosts, each quickly melting into mud, and the last concluding in rain and fog.
‘What would Willow Lawn have been without the drainage?’ Albinia often thought when she paddled down the wet streets, and saw the fields flooded. The damp had such an effect upon Sophy’s throat, temper, and whole nervous system, that her moods had few intervals, and Albinia wrote to the surgeon a detail of her symptoms, asking if she had not better be removed into a more favourable air. But he pronounced that the injury of the transport would outbalance the casual evils of the bad weather, and as the rain and fog mitigated, she improved; but there were others on whom the heavy moist air had a more fatal effect.
One morning, Mr. Kendal saw his wife descending the picturesque rugged stone staircase that led outside the house to the upper stories of the old block of buildings under the hill, nearly opposite to Willow Lawn. She came towards him with tears still in her eyes as she said, ‘Poor Mrs. Simkins has just lost her little girl, and I am afraid the two boys are sickening.’
‘What do you mean? Is the fever there again?’ exclaimed Mr. Kendal in the utmost consternation.
‘Did you not know it? Lucy has been very anxious about the child, who was in her class.’
‘You have not taken Lucy to a house with a fever!’
‘No, I thought it safer not, though she wanted very much to go.’
‘But you have been going yourself!’
‘It was a low, lingering fever. I had not thought it infectious, and even now I believe it is only one of those that run through an over-crowded family. The only wonder is, that they are ever well in such a place. Dear Edmund, don’t be angry; it is what I used to do continually at Fairmead. I never caught anything; and there is plenty of chloride of lime, and all that. I never imagined you would disapprove.’
‘It is the very place where the fever began before!’ said Mr. Kendal, almost under his breath.
Instead of going into the house, he made her turn into the garden, where little Maurice was being promenaded in the sun. He stretched out from his nurse’s arms to go to them, and Albinia was going towards him, but her husband held her fast, and said, ‘I beg you will not take the child till you have changed your dress.’
Albinia was quite subdued, alarmed at the effect on him.
‘You must go away at once,’ he said presently. ‘How soon can you be ready? You had better take Lucy and Maurice at once to your brother’s. They will excuse the liberty when they know the cause.’
‘And pray what is to become of poor Sophy?’
‘Never going out, there may be the less risk for her. I will take care of her myself.’
‘As if I was going to endure that!’ cried Albinia. ‘No, no, Edmund, I am not likely to run away from you and Sophy! You may send Lucy off, if you like, but certainly not me, or if you do I shall come back the same evening.’
‘I should be much happier if you were gone.’
‘Thank you, but what should I be? No, if it were to be caught here, which I don’t believe, now the pond is gone, it would be of no use to send me away, after I have been into the house with it.’
Her resolution and Sophy’s need prevailed, and most unwillingly Mr. Kendal gave up the point. She was persuaded that he was acting on a panic, the less to be wondered at after all he had suffered. She thought the chief danger was from the effect of his fears, and would fain have persuaded him to remain at Fairmead with Lucy, but she was not prepared to hear him insist on likewise removing Maurice. She had promised not to enter the sick room again, and pleaded that the little boy need never be taken into the street—that the fever was not likely to come across the running stream—that the Fairmead nursery was full enough already.
Mr. Kendal was inexorable. ‘I hope you may never see what I have seen,’ he said gravely, and Albinia was silenced.
A man who had lost so many children might be allowed to be morbidly jealous of the health of the rest. But it was a cruel stroke to her to be obliged to part with her noble little boy, just when his daily advances in walking and talking made him more charming than ever. Her eyes were full of tears, and she struggled to choke back some pettish rebellious words.
‘You do not like to trust him with Susan,’ said Mr. Kendal; ‘you had better come with him.’
‘No,’ said Albinia, ‘I ought to stay here, and if you judge it right, Maurice must go. I’ll go and speak to Susan.’
And away she ran, for she had no power just then to speak in a wifely manner. It was not easy to respect a man in a panic so extremely inconvenient.
He was resolved on an immediate start, and the next few hours were spent in busy preparation, and in watching lest the excited Lucy should frighten her sister. Albinia tried to persuade Mr. Kendal at least to sleep at Fairmead that night, and after watching him drive off, she hurried, dashing away the tears that would gather again and again in her eyes, to hold council with the Dusautoys on the best means of stopping the course of the malady, by depriving it of its victims.
She had a quiet snug evening with Sophy, whom she had so much interested in the destitution of the sick children as to set her to work at some night-gear for them, and she afterwards sat long over the fire trying to read to silence the longing after the little soft cheek that had never yet been laid to rest without her caress, and foreboding that Mr. Kendal would return from his dark solitary drive with his spirits at the lowest ebb.
So late that she had begun to hope that Winifred had obeyed her behest and detained him, she heard his step, and before she could run to meet him, he had already shut himself into the study.
She was at the door in a moment; she feared he had thought her self-willed in the morning, and she was the more bent on rousing him. She knocked—she opened the door. He had thrown himself into his arm-chair, and was bending over the dreary, smouldering, sulky log and white ashes, and his face, as he raised his head, was as if the whole load of care and sorrow had suddenly descended again.
‘I am sorry you sat up,’ was of course his beginning, conveying anything but welcome; but she knew that this only meant that he was in a state of depression. She took hold of his hand, chilled with holding the reins, told him of the good fire in the morning-room, and fairly drew him up-stairs.
There the lamp burnt brightly, and the red fire cast a merry glow over the shining chintz curtains, and the two chairs drawn so cosily towards the fire, the kettle puffing on the hearth, and Albinia’s choice little bed-room set of tea-china ready on the small table. The cheerfulness seemed visibly to diffuse itself over his face, but he still struggled to cherish his gloom, ‘Thank you, but I would not have had you take all this trouble, my dear.’
‘It would be a great deal more trouble if you caught a bad cold. I meant you to sleep at Fairmead.’
‘Yes, they pressed me very kindly, but I could not bear not to come home.’
‘And how did Maurice comport himself?’
‘He talked to the horse and then went to sleep, and he was not at all shy with his aunt after the first. He watched the children, but had not begun to play with them. Still I think he will be quite happy with Lucy there, and I hope it will not be for long.’
It was a favourable sign that Mr. Kendal communicated all these particulars without being plied with questions, and Albinia went on with the more spirit.
‘No, I hope it may not be for long. We have been holding a great council against the enemy, and I do hope that we have really done something. No, you need not be afraid, I have not been there again, but we have been routing out the nucleus, and hope we may starve out the fever for want of victims. You never saw such a swarm as we had to turn out. There were twenty-three people to be considered for.’
‘Twenty-three! Have you turned out the whole block?’
‘No, I wish we had; but that would have been seventy-five. This is only from those two tenements with one door!’
‘Impossible!’
‘I should have thought so; but the lawful inhabitants make up sixteen, and there were seven lodgers.’
Mr. Kendal gave a kind of groan, and asked what she had done; she detailed the measures.
‘Twenty-three people in those two houses, and seventy-five in the whole block of building?’
‘Too true. And if you could only see the rooms! The windows that wont open; the roofs that open too much; the dirt on the staircases, and, oh! the horrible smells!’
‘It shall not go on,’ said Mr. Kendal. ‘I will look over the place.’
‘Not till the fever is out of it,’ hastily interposed Albinia.
He made a sign of assent, and went on: ‘I will certainly talk to Pettilove, and have the place repaired, if it be at my own expense.’
Albinia lifted up her eyes, not understanding at whose expense it should be.
‘The fact is,’ continued Mr. Kendal, ‘that there has been little to induce me to take interest in the property. Old Mr. Meadows was, as you know, a successful solicitor, and purchased these various town tenements bit by bit, and then settled them very strictly on his grandson. He charged the property with life incomes to his widow and daughters, and to me; but the land is in the hands of trustees until my son’s majority, and Pettilove is the only surviving trustee.’
The burning colour mantled in Albinia’s face, and almost inaudibly she said, ‘I beg your pardon, Edmund; I have done you moat grievous injustice. I thought you would not see—’
‘You did not think unjustly, my dear. I ought to have paid more attention to the state of affairs, and have kept Pettilove in order. But I knew nothing of English affairs, and was glad to be spared the unpleasant charge. The consequence of leaving a man like that irresponsible never occurred to me. His whole conscience in the matter is to have a large sum to put into Gilbert’s hands when he comes of age. Why, he upholds those dens of iniquity in Tibbs’s Alley on that very ground!’
‘Poor Gilbert! I am afraid a large sum so collected is not likely to do him much good! and at one-and-twenty—! But that is one notion of faithfulness!’
Albinia was much happier after that conversation. She could better endure to regret her own injustice than to believe her husband the cruel landlord; and it was no small advance that he had afforded her an explanation which once he would have deemed beyond the reach of female capacity.
In spite of the lack of little Maurice’s bright presence, which, to Albinia’s great delight, his father missed as much as she did, the period of quarantine sped by cheerfully. Sophy had not a single sullen fit the whole time, and Albinia having persuaded Mr. Kendal that it would be a sanatory measure to whitewash the study ceiling, he was absolutely forced to turn out of it and live in the morning-room, with all his books piled up in the dining-room. And on that great occasion Albinia abstracted two fusty, faded, green canvas blinds from the windows, carried them off with a pair of tongs, and pushed them into a bonfire in the garden, persuaded they were the last relics of the old fever. She had the laurels cut, the curtains changed, the windows cleaned, and altogether made the room so much lighter, that when Mr. Kendal again took possession, he did not look at all sure whether he liked it; and though he was courteously grateful, he did not avail himself of the den half so much as when it had more congenial gloom. But then he had the morning-room as a resort, and it was one of Albinia’s bargains with herself, that as far as her own influence could prevent it, neither he nor Sophy should ever render it a literal boudoir.
The sense of snugness that the small numbers produced was one great charm, and made Mr. Kendal come unusually far out of his shell. His chief sanatory precaution was to take Albinia out for a drive or walk every day, and these expeditions were greatly enjoyed.
One day, after a visit from her old nurse, Sophy received Albinia with the words,—
‘Oh, mamma,’ she said, ‘old nurse has been telling me such things. I shall never be cross with Aunt Maria again. It is such a sad story, just like one in a book, if she was but that kind of person.’
‘Aunt Maria! I remember Mrs. Dusautoy once saying she gave her the idea of happiness shattered, but—’
‘Did she?’ exclaimed Sophy. ‘I never thought Aunt Maria could have done anything but fidget everybody that came near her; but old nurse says a gentleman was once in love with her, and a very handsome young gentleman too. Old Mr. Pringle’s nephew it was, a very fine young officer in the army. I want you to ask papa if it is true. Nurse says that he wrote to make an offer for her, very handsomely, but grandpapa did not choose that both his daughters should go quite away; so he locked the letter up, and said no, and never told her, and she thought the captain had been trifling and playing her false, and pined and fretted, till she got into this nervous way, and fairly wore herself out, nurse says, and came to be what she is now, instead of the prettiest young lady in the town! And then, mamma, when grandpapa died, she found the letter in his papers, and one inside for her, that had never been given to her; and by that time there was no hope, for Captain Pringle had gone out with his regiment, and married a rich young lady in the Indies! Oh, mamma! you see she really is deserted, and it is all man’s treachery that has broken her heart. I thought people always died or went into convents—I don’t mean that Aunt Maria could have done that, but I did not think that way of hers was a broken heart!’
‘If she has had such troubles, it should indeed make us try to be very forbearing with her,’ said Albinia.
‘Will you ask papa about it?’ entreated Sophy.
‘Yes, certainly; but you must not make sure whether he will think it right to tell us. Poor Aunt Maria; I do think some part of it must be true!’
‘But, mamma, is that really like deserted love?’
‘My dear, I don’t think I ever saw deserted love,’ said Albinia, rather amused. ‘I suppose troubles of any kind, if not—I mean, I suppose, vexations—make people show their want of spirits in the way most accordant with their natural dispositions, and so your poor aunt has grown querulous and anxious.’
‘If she has such a real grand reason for being unhappy, I shall not be cross about it now, except—’
Sophy gave a sigh, and Albinia bade her good night.
Mr. Kendal had never heard the story before, but he remembered many circumstances in corroboration. He knew that Mr. Pringle had a nephew in the army, he recollected that he had made a figure in Maria’s letters to India; and that he had subsequently married a lady in the Mauritius, and settled down on her father’s estate. He testified also to the bright gay youth of poor Maria, and his surprise at the premature loss of beauty and spirits; and from his knowledge of old Mr. Meadows, he believed him capable of such an act of domestic tyranny. Maria had always been looked upon as a mere child, and if her father did not choose to part with her, he would think it for her good, and his own peace, for her not to be aware of the proposal. He was much struck, for he had not suspected his sister-in-law to be capable of such permanent feeling.
‘There was little to help her in driving it away,’ said Albinia. ‘Few occupations or interests, and very little change, to prevent it from preying on her spirits.’
‘True,’ said Mr. Kendal; ‘a narrow education and limited sphere are sad evils in such cases.’
‘Do you think anything can be a cure for disappointment?’ asked Sophy, in such a solemn, earnest tone, that Albinia was disposed to laugh; but she knew that this would be a dire offence, and was much surprised that Sophy had so far broken through her reserve, as to mingle in their conversation on such a subject.
‘Occupation,’ said Mr. Kendal, but speaking rather as if from duty than from conviction. ‘There are many sources of happiness, even if shipwreck have been made on one venture. Your aunt had few resources to which to turn her mind. Every pursuit or study is a help stored up against the vacuity which renders every care more corroding.’
‘Well!’ said Sophy, in her blunt, downright way, ‘I think it would take all the spirit out of everything.’
‘I hope you will never be tried,’ said Mr. Kendal, with a mournful smile, as if he did not choose to confess that she had divined too rightly the probable effect of trouble upon her own temperament.
‘I suppose,’ said Albinia, ‘that the real cure can be but one thing for that, as for any other trouble. I mean, “Thy will be done.” I don’t suppose anything else would give energy to turn to other duties. But it would be more to the purpose to resolve to be more considerate to poor Maria.’
‘I shall never be impatient with her again,’ said Sophy.
And though at first the discovery of so romantic a cause for poor Miss Meadows’s fretfulness dignified it in Sophy’s eyes, yet it did not prove sufficient to make it tolerable when she tormented the window-blinds, teased the fire, was shocked at Sophy’s favourite studies, or insisting on her wishing to see Maria Drury. Nay, the bathos often rendered her petty unconscious provocations the more harassing, and Sophy often felt, in an agony of self-reproach, that she ought to have known herself too well to expect to show forbearance with any one when she was under the influence of ill-temper.
In Easter week Mr. Ferrars brought Lucy and Maurice home, and Gilbert came for a short holiday.
Gilbert was pleased when he was called to go over the empty houses with his father, Mr. Ferrars, and a mason.
Back they came, horrified at the dreadful disrepair, at the narrow area into which such numbers were crowded, and still more at the ill odours which Mr. Ferrars and the mason had gallantly investigated, till they detected the absence of drains, as well as convinced themselves that mending roofs, floors, or windows, would be a mere mockery unless the whole were pulled down.
Mr. Ferrars was more than ever thankful to be a country parson, and mused on the retribution that the miasma, fostered by the avarice of the grandfather and the neglect of the father, had brought on the family. Dives cannot always scorn Lazarus without suffering even in this life.
Gilbert, in the glory of castle-building, was talking eagerly of the thorough renovation that should take place, the sweep that should be made of all the old tenements, and the wide healthy streets and model cottages that should give a new aspect to the town.
Mr. Kendal prepared for the encounter with Pettilove, and his son begged to go with him, to which he consented, saying that it was time Gilbert should have an opinion in a matter that affected him so nearly.
Gilbert’s opinion of the interview was thus announced on his return: ‘If there ever was a brute in the world, it is that Pettilove!’
‘Then he wont consent to do anything?’
‘No, indeed! Say what my father or I would to him, it was all of not the slightest use. He smiled, and made little intolerable nods, and regretted—but there were the settlements, and his late lamented partner! A parcel of stuff. Not so much as a broken window will he mend! He says he is not authorized!’
‘Quite true,’ said Mr. Kendal. ‘The man is warranted in his proceedings, and thinks them his duty, though I believe he has a satisfaction in the power of thwarting me.’
‘I’m sure he has!’ cried Gilbert. ‘I am sure there was spite in his grin when he pulled out that horrid old parchment, with the lines a yard long, and read us out the abominable old crabbed writing, all about the houses, messuages, and tenements thereupon, and a lot of lawyer’s jargon. I’m sure I thought it was left to Peter Pettilove himself. And when I came to understand it, one would have thought it took my father to be the worst enemy we had in the world, bent on cheating us!’
‘That is the assumption on which settlements are drawn up, Gilbert,’ said his father.
‘Can nothing be done, then?’ said Albinia.
‘Thus much,’ said Mr. Kendal. ‘Pettilove will not object to our putting the houses somewhat in repair, as, in fact, that will be making a present to Gilbert; but he will not spend a farthing on them of the trust, except to hinder their absolute falling, nor will he make any regulation on the number of lodgers. As to taking them down, that is, as I always supposed, out of the question, though I think the trustees might have stretched a point, being certain of both my wishes and Gilbert’s.’
‘Don’t you think,’ said Mr. Ferrars, looking up from his book, ‘that a sanatory commission might be got to over-ride Gilbert’s guardian?’
‘My guardian! do not call him so!’ muttered Gilbert.
‘I am afraid,’ said Mr. Kendal, ‘that unless your commission emulated of Albinia and Dusautoy they would have little perception of the evils. Our local authorities are obtuse in such matters.’
‘Agitate! agitate!’ murmured Mr. Ferrars, going on with his book.
‘Well,’ said Albinia, ‘at least there is one beer-shop less in Tibbs’s Alley. And if there are tolerable seasons, I daresay paint, whitewash, and windows to open, may keep the place moderately wholesome till—Are you sixteen yet, Gilbert? Five years.’
‘Yes, and then—’
Gilbert came and sat down beside her, and they built a scheme for the almshouses so much wanted. Gilbert was sure the accumulation would easily cover the expense, and Albinia had many an old woman, who it was hoped might live to enjoy the intended paradise there.
‘Yes, yes, I promise,’ cried Gilbert, warming with the subject, ‘the first thing I shall do—’
‘No, don’t promise,’ said Albinia. ‘Do it from your heart, or not at all.’
‘No, don’t promise, Gilbert,’ said Sophy.
‘Why not, Sophy?’ he said good-humouredly.
‘Because you are just what you feel at the moment,’ said Sophy.
‘You don’t think I should keep it?’
‘No.’
The grave answer fell like lead, and Albinia told her she was not kind or just to her brother. But she still looked steadily at him, and answered, ‘I cannot help it. What is truth, is truth, and Gilbert cares only for what he sees at the moment.’
‘What is truth need not always be fully uttered,’ said Albinia. ‘I hope you may find it untrue.’
But Sophy’s words would recur, and weigh on her painfully.
All books are sourced from Project Gutenberg