Part 2

“They are paid to do it, Miss: but they put it upon one another, or get out of the way, if they can,—they are so afraid of the fever, you see.——I think we must stop here, please, Miss. I could go a little nearer, only, you see—.”

“I see that you are afraid of the fever too,” said Mary, with a smile, as she jumped out upon the grass. One of the sentinels was within hail. Glad of the relief from the dulness of his watch, he came with alacrity, took charge of the little trunk, and offered to show the lady, from the brow, the way down the hollow to the village.

The post-boy stood, with his money in his hand, watching the retreating lady, till, under a sudden impulse, he hailed her. Looking round, she saw him running towards her, casting a momentary glance back at his horses. He wanted to try once more to persuade her to return to O——. He should be so happy to drive her back, out of the way of danger. His employer would be so glad to see her again! When he perceived that it was no use talking, he went on touching his hat, while he begged her to take back the shilling she had just given him. It would make his mind easier, he said, not to take money for bringing any lady to such a place. Mary saw that this was true; and she took back the shilling, promising that it should be spent in the service of some poor sick person.

As Mary descended into the hollow, she was struck with the quiet beauty of the scene. The last sun-blaze rushed level along the upper part of the cleft, while the lower part lay in deep shadow. While she was descending a steep slope, with sometimes grass, and sometimes grey rock, by the roadside, the opposite height rose precipitous; and from chinks in its brow, little drips of water fell or oozed down, calling into life ferns, and grass, and ivy, in every moist crevice. Near the top, there were rows of swallow-holes; and the birds were at this moment all at play in the last glow of the summer day, now dipping into the shaded dell, down to the very surface of the water, and then sprinkling the grey precipice with their darting shadows. Below, when Mary reached the bridge, she thought all looked shadowy in more senses than one. The first people she saw were some children, excessively dirty, who were paddling about in a shallow pool, which was now none of the sweetest, having been filled by the spring overflow, and gradually drying up ever since. Mary called to these children from the bridge, to ask where Widow Johnson lived. She could learn nothing more than that she must proceed; for, if the creatures had not been almost too boorish to speak, she could have made nothing of the Yorkshire dialect, on the first encounter. In the narrow street, every window seemed closed, and even the shutters of some. She could see nobody in the first two or three shops that she passed; but, at the baker’s, a woman was sitting at work. On the entrance of a stranger, she looked up in surprise; and, when at the door, to point out the turn down to Widow Johnson’s, she remained there, with her work on her arm, to watch the lady up the street. The doctor, quickening his pace, came up, saying,

“Who was that you were speaking to?—A lady wanting Widow Johnson! What a very extraordinary thing! Did you tell her the fever had got there?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“What did she say?”

“She said she must go and nurse them.”

“Do you mean that she is going to stay here?”

“I suppose so, by her talking of nursing them. She says Widow Johnson is her aunt.”

“O! that’s it! I have heard that Mrs. Johnson came of a good family. But what a good creature this must be—that is, if she knows what she is about. If she is off before morning, I shall think it was a vision, dropped down out of the clouds. Eh?”

“She is not handsome enough to be an angel, or anything of that kind,” said the baker’s wife.

“O! isn’t she? I did not see her face. But it is all the better, if she is not very like an angel. She is all the more likely to stay and nurse the Johnsons. Upon my word, they are lucky people if she does. I must go and pay my respects to her presently.—Do look now—at the doors all along the street, on both sides the way! I have not seen so many people at once for weeks past;—for, you know, I have no time to go to church in these days.”

“You would not see many people, if you went. See! some of the children are following her! It is long since they have seen a young lady, in a white gown, and with a smile on her face, in our street. There she goes, past the corner; she has taken the right turn.”

“I will just let her get the meeting over, and settle herself a little,” said the doctor; “and then I will go and pay my respects to her.”

The little rabble of dirty children followed Mary round the corner, keeping in the middle of the lane, and at some distance behind. When she turned to speak to them, they started and fled, as they might have done, if she had been a ghost. But when she laughed, they returned cautiously; and all their brown forefingers pointed the same way at once, when she made her final inquiry about which was the cottage she wanted. Two little boys were pushed forward by the rest; and it transpired that these were grandchildren of Widow Johnson.

“Is she your granny?” said Mary. “Then, I am your cousin. Come with me; and if granny is very much surprised to see me, you must tell her that I am your cousin Mary.”

The boys, however, had no notion of entering the cottage. They slipped away, and hid themselves behind it; and Mary had to introduce herself.

After knocking in vain for some time, she opened the door, and looked in. No one was in the room but a man, whom she at once recognised for Silly Jem. He was half-standing, half-sitting, against the table by the wall, rolling his head from side to side. By no mode of questioning could Mary obtain a word from him. The only thing he did was to throw a great log of wood on the fire, when she observed what a large fire he had. She tried to take it off again; but this he would not permit. The room was insufferably hot and close. The only window was beside the door; so that there was no way of bringing a current of fresh air through the room. Mary tried to open the window; but it was not made to open, except that a small pane at the top, three inches square, went upon hinges. As soon as Mary had opened it, however, poor Jem went and shut it. Within this kitchen, was a sort of closet for stores; and this was the whole of the lower floor. Mary opened one other door, and found within it a steep, narrow stair, down which came a sickening puff of hot, foul air. She went up softly, and Jem slammed the door behind her. It seemed as if it was the business of his life to shut everything.

Groping her way, Mary came to a small chamber, which she surveyed for an instant from the stair, before showing herself within. There was no ceiling; and long cobwebs hung from the rafters. A small window, two feet from the floor, and curtained with a yellow and tattered piece of muslin, was the only break in the wall. On the deal table stood a phial or two, and a green bottle, which was presently found to contain rum. A turn-up bedstead, raised only a foot from the floor, was in a corner; and on it lay some one who was very restless, feebly throwing off the rug, which was immediately replaced by a sleepy woman who dozed between times in a chair that boasted a patchwork cushion. Mary doubted whether the large black eyes which stared forth from the pillow had any sense in them. She went to see.

“Aunty,” said she, going to the bed, and gently taking one of the wasted hands that lay outside. “I am come to nurse you.”

The poor patient made a strong effort to collect herself, and to speak. She did not want anybody. She should do very well. This was no place for strangers. She was too ill to see strangers, and so on; but, from time to time, a few wandering words about her knowing best how to choose a husband for herself—her having a right to marry as she pleased—or of insisting that her relations would go their own way in the world, and leave her hers—showed Mary that she was recognised, and what feelings she had to deal with.

“She knows where I came from; but she takes me for my mother or my grandmother,” thought she. “If she grows clear in mind, we shall be friends on our own account. If she remains delirious, she will become used to the sight of me. I must take matters into my own hands at once.”

The first step was difficult. Coolness and fresh air were wanted above everything. But there was no chimney; the window would not open; poor Jem would not let any door remain open for a moment; and the sleepy neighbour was one of those who insist upon warm bedclothes, large fires, and hot spirit-and-water, in fever cases. She was got rid of by being paid to find somebody who would go for Mary’s trunk, and bring it here before dark. She did her best to administer another dose of rum before she tied on her bonnet; but as the patient turned away her head with disgust, Mary interposed her hand. The dram was offered to her, and, as she would not have it, the neighbour showed the only courtesy then possible, by drinking Mary’s health, and welcome to Bleaburn. The woman had some sharpness. She could see that if she took Jem with her, and put the trunk on his shoulder, she should get the porter’s fee herself, instead of giving it to some rude boy; and, as Mary observed, would be doing a kindness to Jem in taking him for a pleasant evening walk. Thus the coast was cleared. In little more than half-an-hour they would be back. Mary made the most of her time.

She set the doors below wide open, and lowered the fire. She would fain have put on some water to boil, for it appeared to her that everybody and everything wanted washing extremely. But she could find no water, but some which seemed to have been used—which was, at all events, not fit for use now. For water she must wait till somebody came. About air, she did one thing more—a daring thing. She had a little diamond ring on her finger. With this, without noise and quickly, she cut so much of two small panes of the chamber-window as to be able to take them clean out; and then she rubbed the neighbouring panes bright enough to hide, as she hoped, an act which would be thought mad. When she looked round again at Aunty, she could fancy that there was a somewhat clearer look about the worn face, and a little less dulness in the eye. But this might be because she herself felt less sick now that fresh air was breathing up the stairs.

There was something else upon the stairs—the tread of some one coming up. It was the doctor. He said he came to pay his respects to the lady before him, as well as to visit his patient. It was no season for losing time, and doctor and nurse found in a minute that they should agree very well about the treatment of the patient. Animated by finding that he should no longer be wholly alone in his terrible wrestle with disease and death, the doctor did things which he could not have believed he should have courage for. He even emptied out the rum-bottle, and hurled it away into the bed of the stream. The last thing he did was to turn up his cuffs, and actually bring in two pails of water with his own hands. He promised (and kept his promise) to send his boy with a supply of vinegar, and a message to the neighbour that she was wanted elsewhere, that Mary might have liberty to refresh the patient, without being subject to the charge of murdering her. “A charge, however,” said he, “which I fully expect will be brought against any one of us who knows how to nurse. I confess they have cowed me. In sheer despair, I have let them take their own way pretty much. But now we must see what can be done.”

“Yes,” said Mary. “It is fairly our turn now. We must try how we can cow the fever.”

SPRING-TIME IN THE COURT.

They say the Spring has come again! There is no Spring-time here; In this dark, reeking court, there seems No change throughout the year: Except, sometimes, ’tis bitter cold, Or else ’tis hot and foul; How hard it is, in such a place, To feel one has a soul!

They say the Spring has come again! I scarce believe ’tis so; For where’s the sun, and gentle breeze, That make the primrose blow? Oh, would that I could lead my child Over the meadows green, And see him playing with the flowers _His_ eyes have never seen!

His toys are but an oyster-shell, Or piece of broken delf; His playground is the gulley’s side, With outcasts like himself! _I_ used to play on sunny banks, Or else by pleasant streams; How oft—oh, God be thanked! how oft— I see them in my dreams.

I used to throw my casement wide, To breathe the morning’s breath; But now I keep the window close— The air smells so like death! Once only, on my window-sill I placed a little flower, Something to tell me of the fields— It withered in an hour.

Why are we housed like filthy swine? Swine! they have better care; For we are pent up with the plague, Shut out from light and air. We work and wear our lives away, To heap this city’s wealth; But labour God decreed for us— ’Tis man denies us health!

They say the Spring has come again To wake the sleeping seed, Whether it be the tended flower, Or poor, neglected weed! Then Harvest comes. Think you our wrongs For ever, too, will sleep? The misery which man has sown, Man will as surely reap!

THE PLANET-WATCHERS OF GREENWICH.

There is a morsel of Greenwich Park, which has, for now nearly two centuries, been held sacred from intrusion. It is the portion inclosed by the walls of the Observatory. Certainly a hundred thousand visitors must ramble over the surrounding lawns, and look with curious eye upon the towers and outer boundaries of that little citadel of science, for one who finds admission to the interior of the building. Its brick towers, with flanking turrets and picturesque roofs, perched on the side of the gravelly hill, and sheltered round about by groups of fine old trees, are as well known as Greenwich Hospital itself. But what work goes on inside its carefully preserved boundary and under those moveable, black-domed roofs, is a popular mystery. Many a holiday-maker’s wonder has been excited by the fall, at one o’clock, of the huge black ball, high up there, by the weather vane on the topmost point of the eastern turret. He knows, or is told if he asks a loitering pensioner, that the descent of the ball tells the time as truly as the sun; and that all the ships in the river watch it to set their chronometers by, before they sail; and that all the railway clocks, and all the railway trains over the kingdom are arranged punctually by its indications. But how the heavens are watched to secure this punctual definition of the flight of time, and what other curious labours are going on inside the Observatory, is a sealed book. The public have always been, of necessity, excluded from the Observatory walls, for the place is devoted to the prosecution of a science whose operations are inconsistent with the bustle, the interruptions, the talk, and the anxieties of popular curiosity and examination.

But when public information and instruction are the objects, the doors are widely opened, and the press and its _attachés_ find a way into this, as into many other sacred and forbidden spots. Only last week one of ‘our own contributors’ was seen in a carriage on the Greenwich railway, poring over the paper in the last Edinburgh Review that describes our national astronomical establishment, and was known afterwards to have climbed the Observatory hill, and to have rung and gained admission at the little black mysterious gate in the Observatory wall. Let us see what is told in his report of what he saw within that sacred portal.

In the park on a fine day all seems life and gaiety—once within the Observatory boundary, the first feeling is that of isolation. There is a curious stillness about the place, and the footsteps of the old pensioner, who closes the gate upon a visitor, echoes again on the pavement as he goes away to wake up from his astronomical or meteorological trance one of the officers of this sanctum. Soon, under the guidance of the good genius so invoked, the secrets of the place begin to reveal themselves.

The part of the Observatory so conspicuous from without is the portion least used within. When it was designed by Christopher Wren, the general belief was that such buildings should be lofty, that the observer might be raised towards the heavenly bodies whose motions he was to watch. More modern science has taught its disciples better; and in Greenwich,—which is an eminently practical Observatory,—the working part of the building is found crouching behind the loftier towers. These are now occupied as subsidiary to the modern practical building. The ground floor is used as a residence by the chief astronomer; above is the large hall originally built to contain huge moveable telescopes and quadrants—such as are not now employed. Now-a-days, this hall occasionally becomes a sort of scientific counting-house—irreverent but descriptive term—in which, from time to time, a band of scientific clerks are congregated to post up the books, in which the daily business of the planets has been jotted down by the astronomers who watch those marvellous bodies. Another portion is a kind of museum of astronomical curiosities. Flamstead and Halley, and their immediate successors, worked in these towers, and here still rest some of the old, rude tools with which their discoveries were completed, and their reputation, and the reputation of Greenwich, were established. As time has gone on, astronomers and opticians have invented new and more perfect and more luxurious instruments. Greater accuracy is thus obtainable, at a less expenditure of human patience and labour; and so the old tools are cast aside. One of them belonged to Halley, and was put up by him a hundred and thirty years ago; another is an old brazen quadrant, with which many valuable observations were made in by-gone times; and another, an old iron quadrant, still fixed in the stone pier to which it was first attached. Some of the huge telescopes that once found place in this old Observatory, have been sent away. One went to the Cape of Good Hope, and has been useful there. Another of the unsatisfactory, and now unused, instruments had a tube twenty-five feet long, whose cool and dark interior was so pleasant to the spiders that, do what they would, the astronomers could not altogether banish the persevering insects from it. Spin they would; and, spite of dusting and cleaning, and spider-killing, spin they did; and, at length, the savans got more instruments and less patience, and the spiders were left in quiet possession. This has been pleasantly spoken of as an instance of poetical justice. It is but fair that spiders should, at times, have the best of astronomers, for astronomers rob spiders for the completion of their choicest instruments. No fabric of human construction is fine enough to strain across the eye-piece of an important telescope, and opticians preserve a particular race of spiders, that their webs may be taken for that purpose. The spider lines are strained across the best instruments at Greenwich and elsewhere; and when the spinners of these beautifully fine threads disturbed the accuracy of the tube in the western wing of the old Observatory, it was said to be but fair retaliation for the robberies the industrious insects had endured.

A narrow stair leads from the unused rooms of the old Observatory to its leaded roof, whence a magnificent view is obtained; the park, the hospital, the town of Greenwich, and the windings of the Thames, and, gazing further, London itself comes grandly into the prospect. The most inveterate astronomer could scarcely fail to turn for a moment from the wonders of the heavens to admire these glories of the earth. From the leads, two turrets are reached, where the first constantly active operations in this portion of the building, are in progress.

At the present time, indeed, these turrets are the most useful portions of the old building. In one is placed the well-known contrivance for registering, hour after hour, and day after day, the force and direction of the wind. To keep such a watch by human vigilance, and to make such a register by human labour, would be a tedious, expensive, and irksome task; and human ingenuity taxed itself to make a machine for perfecting such work. The wind turns a weather-cock, and, by aid of cog-wheels the motion is transferred to a lead pencil fixed over a sheet of paper, and thus the wind is made to write down the direction which itself is blowing. Not far distant is a piece of metal, the flat side of which is ever turned by the weather-cock to meet the full force of the wind, which, blowing upon it, drives it back against a spring. To this spring is affixed a chain passing over pullies towards another pencil, fixed above a sheet of paper, and moving faithfully, more or less, as the wind blows harder or softer. And thus the ‘gentle zephyr’ and the fresh breeze, and the heavy gale, and, when it comes, the furious hurricane, are made to note down their character and force. The sheets of paper on which the uncertain element, the wind, is bearing witness against itself, is fixed upon a frame moved by clockwork. Steady as the progress of time, this ingenious mechanism draws the paper under the suspended pencils. Thus each minute and each hour has its written record, without human help or inspection. Once a day only, an assistant comes to put a new blank sheet in the place of that which has been covered by the moving pencils, and the latter is taken away to be bound up in a volume. The book might with truth be lettered ‘The History of the Wind; written by Itself,’—an Æolian autobiography.

Close by is another contrivance for registering in decimals of an inch the quantity of rain that falls. The drops are caught, and passing down a tube, a permanent mark is made by which the quantity is determined.