IVY. BY SILAS K. HOCKING, F.R.H.S. AUTHOR OF "REEDYFORD," "HER BENNY," GREEN," &c., &c. "HIS FATHER," "ALEC CHAPTER XXI. IN WHICH THE COTTAGE RECEIVES ITS LAST OCCUPANTS, AND DISAPPEARS FROM THE SCENE. "FRIE ""Tis past! 'tis past! but I gaze on it now With quivering breath and throbbing brow; 'Twas there she nursed me-'twas there she died, And memory flows with lava tide. Say it is folly, and deem me weak, While the scalding tears run down my cheek." ELIZA COOK. "RIENDS and neighbours," commenced Captain Jack, in rather nervous accents, "I'm no speaker, and I don't know if I shall make you understand what I mean; but if you'll listen to me I'll do my best, and say what's in my heart to say. With all respect to our vicar-and nobody has more respect for him than I have, though I've never been much of a church or chapel goer; but I admire goodness wherever I see it, and I believe he's a good man if there's one anywhere abouts. Well, as I was going to say, with all respect to him, I can't help thinking that he got hold of the subject by the wrong end this afternoon. I've read a good bit lately, and I've thought a good bit too, and the more I have thought over this matter that is so troubling us all, the more I'm convinced that God has not sent it because He is angry with us. As a village we are no worse in our conduct than hundreds of other villages, and it isn't reasonable to suppose that God would single us out to vent His anger on. But in one thing we have neglected our duty. We have not attended to the laws of health, we have not kept our village clean; on the contrary, it is foul, and we all know it. There are reeking ash-pits at nearly every back door, and the smells that rise from them during hot days are frightful. Our village has never been properly sewered, for which somebody's to blame; and altogether, by our own carelessness, and by our neglect of the commonest laws of health, we have invited the plague that's come to us. That is the reason why the cholera comes here when it visits no other place. Scalds result from coming into contact with fire, and fevers and cholera from coming into contact with poisonous air and impure smells. I ask you if what I say is not reasonable?" This appeal was answered by a general nodding of heads. And Jack, having warmed with his theme, went on again. "Now, I don't say a word against our humbling ourselves and fasting and pray. ing. That's right enough in its place. We've all sinned in that we have broken heaven's first law-cleanliness." Here someone suggested that "order" was the first law of heaven. "Well," said Jack, "it amounts to about the same thing in the long run, and everything teaches us that we can't break any of God's laws without suffering the consequences. If a man goes to sleep in a wet field and gets the rheumatism, nobody thinks of saying that God has afflicted him, and it would not be right to do And now that we have brought this affliction upon ourselves by our neglect of the simplest laws of health, I don't think we ought to blame God for it Ie. lieve God pities us because we've been so blind and foolish, and I trust this will open our eyes." "But a'int you been blind and foolish, Captain Jack," someone said, "to remain in the village and run the risks you do, when you've no family ties to keep you, and might have cleared out of it at the first outbreak?" "Perhaps I have been," said Jack, "and I did think of going away at first, but somehow I felt it to be my duty to stay, and I have stayed in the hope that I might do some good." "Well, you're a good fellow," said several voices, " and nobody can deny it. But what do you suggest?" "Form our "That we try to cleanse the village," promptly answered Jack. selves into a band of street-sweepers or scavengers, or any other name you like to give, clean out and disinfect every dirty hole and corner in the place. What single-handed would take a year to do, a hundred of us may accomplish in two or three days." "Would you be willing to work shoulder to shoulder with the others ?" someone asked. "That I would," said Jack. "I'll do my part with any man, and if every man of us do his best, we shall go a long way towards stamping out this terrible plague." The old saying that 'many hands make light work" never found truer illusration than on the following day, and for several days after. And within a week it might almost be said that the village was "swept and garnished." Jack was recognised as leader of the band, and true to his promise he worked shoulder to shoulder with the best of them. Never in any town or city was there seen such an earnest band of scavengers as that which paraded the lanes and alleys of Northhaven during that week. Each man felt that he was engaged in a hand-to-hand fight with death, and not a hand was relaxed while strength was given or work remained to be done. The terrible epidemic had got too fast a hold upon the villiage to be stamped out at once, but there can be no doubt whatever that they did a great deal to wards checking its progress. The doctors were unanimous in their praise of Captain Jack. They had often urged the very same thing that he had, but not in the same way, and so they had failed to secure united action in the matter. Ivy heard Jack's praises sung on every hand, and felt proud of her friend. In her eyes he seemed almost a hero. She never thought of her own conduct being heroic. She was only a girl, and whether she lived or died she thought did not much matter to anybody. But Jack Winchester was a man, the captain of the Primrose, and the owner of several other boats and of a good deal of property besides. And for him to remain in the plague-stricken village when he might easily have escaped, to risk his life for others' good, seemed to her the very height of heroism, and she admired him accordingly. Meanwhile there was not a more diligent worker in Northhaven than Ivy Stewart. She seemed to be everywhere, and everywhere she was welcomed as an angel from heaven. She recoiled from no danger, shirked no duty, and day by day her strength seemed to increase with the demands made upon it. Had any one told her beforehand what scenes she would have to witness, and what duties she would have to do, she would have recoiled with perfect horror. Day by day she walked among the dying and the dead, unconscious of fear, and amazed at her own strength and endurance. As a soldier in the heat of the battle forgets all fear and becomes to a large extent unconscious of danger, so Ivy, when in the thick of the fight with the fell destroyer that was ravaging the homes of Northhaven, thought no more of herself. It never seemed to occur to her that she might be smitten down at any moment. She went where the contagion was most fierce and foul, without a fear; with her soft hand she soothed the fevered brow of the dying and straitened the contorted limbs of the dead, and no thought of danger entered her head. To many a weary sufferer she seemed scarcely one of earth, and those who had not known her in the days of her childhood were hard to believe that she was one of themselves and had grown up in their midst. To Jeremiah Swift Ivy's life was a constant mystery and a constant rebuke. Day by day, as he watched her go in and out, his own selfish life seemed to become more and more contemptible, and he inwardly resolved that if ever he got strong again he would live a better life than he had hitherto done. One day, while thus thinking about the past and resolving to do better for the future, Ivy came up to his bedside and said, "If you please, Mr. Swift, I want to ask a favour of you." "Ask what you like," he said in a fit of magnanimity, "and if it's in my power it shall be granted." "Then I want you to let me have my old home, as a sort of hospital for several old women who at present are almost suffocating in cellars, and Captain Jack and his men want to clean out all the cellars in the place." "You shall have it, Ivy, and anything else you want." "I thank you very much; and now, if you can spare me, I will go at once and get the house ready for their going into it to morrow morning." Any time you like, Ivy. I've no right to keep you here when you can be doing good somewhere else. You'll find the key hanging on the wall in the passage; you'll know it again." Oh, yes, I should know it among a thousand," and the next moment she was gone. Ivy had not been near the cottage since she and Ned fled from it that dark night in March, and she felt sometimes as if she could not bear to go near it again. Yet the idea of taking these old women there was her own, and though the effort cost her more than anyone ever knew, she resolutely carried it out. The sight of the cottage brought the tears to her eyes, and the garden gate and the gravel path and the weed-grown garden brought back a thousand memories of the dear old days that would come no more for ever. Her hand trembled when she unlocked and pushed open the door, and when she got inside she sat down in the dear old rocking-chair and wept. All around her lay relics of the old life of mingled joy and pain. Could it be possible that it had passed away for ever? In the corner was her father's walking-stick, and behind the door his hat (she could never bear to put it out of sight); and hanging against the dresser was a shawl her mother used to wear, and on the mantlepiece was Fred's money-box shaped like a church and steeple, and at her feet was little Ned's rocking-chair, and against the wall the dear old sofa, in the deep corner of which the little sufferer lay patiently day after day; and scattered all over the place were his toys, which they had left in their hasty flight. Ah, never more would those tiny fingers play with his much-loved toys, for by their mother's side he was sleeping in the green churchyard, and her father lay asleep in the great green sea, while poor Fred," like Cain, was a wanderer upon the earth, and she alone was left. 66 And Ivy cried long and silently, rocking herself to and fro in her chair. The sense of her loss came back to her that day as it had not come back for many a day before. The sight of the old home opened the wounds afresh that were beginning to heal, and she felt her bereavement as keenly as in the first hour of her loss Sitting there alone in the silent room, that once was full of life and joy, she felt herself an orphan indeed, and yet this very sense of loneliness and less drove her nearer to the great Shepherd for sympathy and protection; and after she had prayed, she grew calm and strong once more. Her first work was to stow away in a large wooden box all that she wanted to keep as souvenirs of the past. She cried a great deal while gathering up these relics of other days, but her tears did her good, and eased as nothing else would the aching of her heart. Then she opened all the windows, and lighted a fire, though the day was hot and sultry. But she thought it would help to air the rooms. She could not get the beds outside into the sunshine by herself, and so she got a woman to help her. In the evening Captain Jack and two or three of his men came in "to lend," as they said, "a helping hand." Ivy smiled to see how deftly and orderly they set about their work. Two of them set to work at once to scour the floors, a third began to clean the windows, while Captain Jack took the furniture in hand and polished it well. Before dark the cottage was quite ready for the reception of its inmates, and an hour after dawn on the following day half-a-dozen aged women were in possession of Ivy's old home. It cost her a pang to see strangers in the house. But there was none of the "dog in the manger" spirit in Ivy's heart, and the simple thanks of these poor women were to her abundant compensation. I may as well say here as elsewhere that the plague never reached the cottage, and for three months the old women lived together without any serious quarrel. Of course, no place was so dear to them as the musty cellars they had left, and when all danger was past, they were glad enough to part company and go back again to their poor little homes, which, nevertheless, were endeared to them by many pleasant associations. They were the last occupants of the cottage, for during the night after their removal-from some cause or other never explained-the house took fire, and before help could be rendered was burnt to the ground. Nothing was saved but Ivy's box of relics, which had been conveyed to a little house in the garden in which her father had kept his garden tools, fishing-tackle, and the like. Ivy cried a good deal when she saw the bare, blackened, and crumbling walls The last link that bound her to the old life was broken now, and to see the dear old home in ruins was very painful to her, and yet scarcely more so than it woul have been to have seen it occupied by strangers. All that she valued most-her father's hat and stick, her mother's shawl, Fred's money-box, and little Ned's toys, with many other little things of no intrinsic value, but dear because of their association with what once was and never could be again-all these were safe, and she could take them with her wherever she went. So, on the whole, she thought perhaps that all had happened for the best; and day by day she did her duty, and did it well, and tried to be content. CHAPTER XXII. IN WHICH THE WORKHOUSE RECEIVES AN INMATE WHO IS NOT A PAUPER. FOR two months "the plague" held sway and then disappeared. During the first month a hundred and fifty people died, of whom two-thirds were children. Barely one-half of those afflicted recovered. During the second month one hundred and fifty people were seized, of whom one hundred and twenty got well again; so that while the mortality was fifty per cent. during the first month, of those who were attacked during the second month it fell to twenty per cent., and this the doctors attributed very largely to the measures taken by Captain Jack and his coworkers. During all this time both Ivy and Jack Winchester seemed to bear charmed lives. Every day while the scourge lasted people expected that they would be the next to fall. Yet they escaped unhurt, and many were the expressions of gratitude, when the dread epidemic was over, that these young people, who had worked so nobly and risked their lives for the good of others, were among the spared of God. Jack had stumbled at the idea of an over-ruling Providence before then, but never after. The manner in which his life had been spared broke down the barrier of doubt and unbelief, removed the last obstacle that stood in the path that led to the fold of the Saviour, and when at length the villagers by unanimous consent set apart a day for special thansgiving, Jack gave himself unreservedly to the Master's service, and from that day lived a life that was a model of Christian earnestness and simplicity. When the next Local Board election took place, Jack was returned at the head of the poll, and but for his own protest they would have made him chairman as well. As Jack had both time and money at his disposal, he paid a great deal of attention to local interests, and very soon introduced a scheme relative to the sanitary arrangement of the town. In this matter he decided that it would be best to strike while the iron was hot, and while the dread realities of the recent plague was fresh in their memories. Jack expected some little opposition, for a great deal of money would be required to carry out his scheme, and he knews that the people of Northhaven, as in most other places, were very sensitive on the question of "rates." Much to his surprise, however, not a single voice was raised against his scheme. Of course it was subjected to a great deal of criticism by the members of the Board, and a good many amendments were suggested in the matter of detail, some of which Jack gladly accepted and embodied in his proposal. But as far as the great principle was concerned, the Board was unanimous. Of course some considerable time elapsed before the scheme could be said to be fairly afloat. In the first place, certain borrowing powers had to be secured. Then a committee had to be appointed to see that the work was properly carried out. Then an engineer had to be engaged, and finally tenders to be received and contracts to be signed, all of which consumed time. |