jan has the fever.—convalescence in master swift’s cottage.—the squire on demoralization.
jan took the fever. he was very ill, too, partly from grief at abel’s death. he had also a not unnatural conviction that he would die, which was unfavorable to his recovery.
the day on which he gave master swift his old etching as a last bequest, he fairly infected him also with this belief, and during a necessary visit to the village the schoolmaster hung up the little picture in his cottage with a breaking heart.
but the next time rufus saw him, he came to prepare for a visitor. jan was recovering, and master swift had persuaded the windmiller to let him come to the cottage for a few days, the rather that mrs. lake was going to stay with a relative whilst the windmill was thoroughly cleansed and disinfected. the weather was delightful now, and, feeble as he had become, jan soon grew strong again. if he had not done so, it would have been from no lack of care on master swift’s part. the old schoolmaster was a thrifty man, and had some money laid by, or he would have been somewhat pinched at this time. as it was, he drew freely upon his savings for jan’s benefit, and made many expeditions to the town to buy such delicacies as he thought might tempt his appetite. nor was this all. the morning when jan came languidly into the kitchen from the little inner room, where he and the schoolmaster slept, he saw his precious paint-box on the table, to fetch which master swift had been to the windmill. and by it lay a square book with the word sketch-book in ornamental characters on the binding, a couple of cumberland lead drawing pencils, and a three-penny chunk of bottle india-rubber, delicious to smell.
if the schoolmaster had had any twinges of regret as he bought these things, in defiance of his principles for jan’s education, they melted utterly away in view of his delight, and the glow that pleasure brought into his pale cheeks. master swift was regarded, too, by a colored sketch of rufus sitting at table in his arm-chair, with his more mongrel friend on the floor beside him. it was the best sketch that jan had yet accomplished. but most people are familiar with the curious fact that one often makes an unaccountable stride in an art after it has been laid aside for a time.
it must not be supposed that master swift had neglected his duties in the village, or left the parson, the squire, and the doctor to struggle on alone, during the illness of abel and of jan. even now he was away from the cottage for the greater part of the day, and jan was left to keep house with the dogs. his presence gave great contentment to rufus, if it scarcely lessened the melancholy dignity of his countenance; for dogs who live with human beings never like being left long alone. and jan, for his own part, could have wished for nothing better than to sit at the table where he had once hoped to make leaf-pictures, and paint away with materials that rembrandt himself would not have disdained.
the pestilence had passed away. but the labors of the rector and his staff rather increased than diminished at this particular point. to say nothing of those vile wretches who seem to spring out of such calamities as putrid matter breeds vermin, and who use them as opportunities for plunder, there were a good many people to be dealt with of a lighter shade of demoralization,—people who had really suffered, and whose daily work had been unavoidably stopped, but to whom idleness was so pleasant, and the fame of their misfortunes so gratifying, that they preferred to scramble on in dismantled homes, on the alms extracted by their woes, to setting about such labor as would place them in comfort. then that large class—the shiftless—was now doubly large, and there were widows and orphans in abundance, and there was hardly a bed or a blanket in the place.
“i have come,” said mr. ammaby, joining the rector as he sat at breakfast, “to beg you, in the interests of the village, to check the flow of that fount of benevolence which springs eternal in the clerical pocket. you will ruin us with your shillings and half crowns.”
“bless my soul, ammaby,” said the rector, pausing with an eggshell transfixed upon his spoon, “shillings and half crowns don’t go far in the present condition of our households. there are not ten families whose beds are not burnt. what do you propose to do?”
“i’ll tell you, when i have first confessed that my ideas are not entirely original. i have been studying political economy under that hard-headed sandy, our friend the doctor. in the first place, from to-morrow, we must cease to give any thing whatever, and both announce that determination and stick to it.”
“and then, my dear sir?” said the rector, smiling; and nursing his black gaiter.
“and then, my dear sir,” said mr. ammaby, “i shall be able to get some men to do some work about my place, and those people at a distance who have widows here will relieve them (at least the widows will look up their well-to-do relatives), and the church, in your person, will not be charged. and some of the widows will consent to scrub for payment, instead of sitting weeping in your kitchen—also for payment. they will, furthermore, compel their interesting sons to mind pigs, or scare birds, instead of hanging about the heart of oak, begging of the visitors who now begin to invade us. do you know that the very boys won’t settle to work, that the children are taking to gutter-life and begging, that the women won’t even tidy up their houses, and that the men are retailing the horrors of the fever in every alehouse in the county, instead of getting in the crops? i give you my word, i had to go down to the inn yesterday, and a lad of eleven or twelve, who didn’t recognize me in chuter’s dark kitchen, came up and began to beg with a whine that would have done credit to a professional mendicant. i stood in the shadow and let him tell his whole story, of a widowed mother and three brothers and sisters living, and six dead; and when he’d finished, and two visitors were fumbling in their pockets, i took him by the collar and lifted him clean through the kitchen and down the yard into the street. i nearly knocked swift over, or rather i nearly fell myself, from concussion with his burly person, but he was the very man i wanted. i said, ‘mr. swift, may i ask you to do me a favor? this boy—whose father was a respectable man—has been begging—begging! in a public room. his excuse is that his mother is starving. will you kindly take him to the hall, and put him in charge of the gardener, with my strict orders that he is to do a good afternoon’s work at weeding in the shrubbery. and that the gardener is to see that he comes every day at nine o’clock in the morning, and works there till four in the afternoon, till the day you reopen school, meal-times and sundays excepted. i will pay his mother five shillings a week, and, if he is a good boy, i’ll give him some old clothes. and if ever you see or hear of his disgracing himself and his friends by begging again, if you don’t thrash him within an inch of his life, i shall.’ i promise you, the widow might starve for the want of that five shillings if the young gentleman could slip out of his bargain. his face was a study. but less so than the schoolmaster’s. the job exactly suited him, and i suspect he knew the lad of old.”
“from what i’ve heard swift say, i fancy he sympathizes with your theories,” said the rector.
“i fear he sympathizes with my temper as well as my theories!” laughed the squire. “as i felt the flush on my own cheek-bone, i caught the fire in his eye. but now, my dear sir, you will consent to some strong measures to prevent the village becoming a mere nest of lazzaroni? let us try the system at any rate. i propose that we do not shut up the soup kitchen yet, but charge a small sum for the soup towards its expenses. and i want to beg you to write another of those graphic and persuasive letters, in which you have appealed to the sympathy of the public with our misfortune.”
“but, bless me!” said the rector, “i thought you were a foe to assisting the people, even out of their own parson’s pocket.”
“well, i taunted the doctor myself with inconsistency, but we do not propose to make a sixpenny dole of the fund. you know there are certain things they can’t do, and some help they seem fairly entitled to receive. we’ve made them burn their bedding, in the interests of the public safety, and it’s only fair they should be helped to replace it. then there is a lot of sanitary work which can only be done by a fund for the purpose; and, if we get the money, we can employ idlers. the women will tidy their houses when they see new blankets, and the sooner the churchyard is made nice, and that monument of yours erected, and we all get into orderly, respectable ways again, the better.”
“enough, enough, my dear ammaby!” cried the rector; “i put myself in your hands, and i will see to the public appeal at once; though i may mention that the credit of those compositions chiefly belongs to old swift. he knows the data minutely, and he delights in the putting together. i think he regards it as a species of literary work. i hope you hear good news of lady louisa and little amabel?”
“they are quite well, thank you,” said the squire; “they are in town just now with lady craikshaw, who has gone up to consult her london doctor.”
“well, farewell, ammaby, for the present. tell the doctor i’ll give his plan a trial, and we’ll get the place into working order as fast as we can.”
“he will be charmed,” said the squire. “he says, as we are going on now, we are breeding two worse pests than the fever,—contentment under remediable discomfort, and a dislike to work.”
