CHAPTER XX.

CONCLUSION.

It is often said that no great work can be accomplished without some correspondingly great sacrifice, and the fever was not stamped out and the water supply made pure without the suffering of an innocent victim in the good cause. And scarcely had the excitement over the accident at the well abated, when Willowton learned that one of the chief directors of the movement--their vicar--was dangerously ill. The long strain, physical and mental, of his resolute fight for the right, the senseless opposition his flock had met him with all through those weary months of work and disappointment, had told on him at last, and when the moment of victory came he succumbed, and three days later he was raging in the delirium of fever. And then, but only then, the wiseacres of the village remarked to each other that they had "minded he looked wonderful quare the last few Sundays--kind a' dazed like;" and the old women had noticed his thin cheeks and restless eye. Yet none of them had ever thought of saying a kind word to him when he called at their cottages, and all had greeted him with the sullen manner they had adopted, as if by common consent, since he had begun his crusade against dirt and insanitariness.

On the evening of that day the doctor's dogcart stopped at Mrs. Lummis's door. He had been such a frequent visitor there during her illness that nobody attached any importance to his visit; though Mrs. Lummis was up and about again, but not yet able to do entirely for herself. But the neighbours did stare when, a quarter of an hour later, Geo came out with a bundle and climbed into the cart alongside him, and drove away up the village with him. And they would have stared harder if they had known whither Geo was bound.

Geo and his mother were sitting at their evening meal when the doctor had knocked at their door. And they were not alone; Milly Greenacre was with them. The three were laughing merrily over the old lady's reminiscences of her "courting" days, and there was a pleasant sense of comfort and happiness in the air.

"I am sorry to interrupt you, Mrs. Lummis," said the doctor, putting his kindly face in at the door, "but I have come to ask you for your nurse."

"Come in, sir, come in," said Mrs. Lummis, rising; and the doctor complied, Geo closing the door behind him.

"But nurse have been gone these two days, sir," she said wonderingly.

"Ah yes. It's not Nurse Blunt I want; it is this good fellow here," looking at Geo, who got very red and looked extremely uncomfortable. "The truth is," went on the doctor, "it is not a woman I want, but a _man_, for the vicar; he is desperately ill, you know."

"Yes, sir, we've heard," said Mrs. Lummis sympathetically. "That's a bad job, poor gentleman, I'm sure; but---"

"Now, look here," said the doctor, cutting short any possible objections, "this is a matter of life or death; there is no time to lose.--Will you or will you not come?" turning to Geo.

"Me, sir! I am sure I don't know. I don't know nothin' about nursing. I---"

"You know quite enough. Nurse Blunt will be there when she can, and Mrs. Crowe will do her best. But the truth is, the poor man is violent. It is a strong man I want, with a steady nerve and a good temper. You, I think can answer to this description, and I think, after the pluck and ability you showed during the past week, that I can trust you."

Geo's eyes gleamed for a moment under their downcast lids, and he looked at his mother and Milly for inspiration; and the doctor's keen eye noticed with amusement that he sought Milly's counsel first.

"Oh, you must go," said Milly warmly, answering the look. "That would be a shame not to go to him. If only I was a man---"

"Which you need not wish at all, Milly," said the doctor, laughing, for he had known Milly all her life. "You had better come and help Mrs. Lummis a bit every day, and let her son go.--Come along, Geo; put your night things together and let us be off." And so, as Mrs. Lummis expressed it afterwards, "the doctor was so terrible masterful he took him off before my own eyes as if he'd a-been no more'n a child!"

But Geo proved no child, and, indeed, it was no child's work he had to perform. For several nights he and Mrs. Crowe sat up with the sick man, who, until the fever had spent itself, was so strong that Geo had to put forth all his strength at times to hold him when the fits of delirium came on. Then came the inevitable weakness that follows fever, and so for a fortnight the vicar of Willowton lay between life and death.

"Quiet, nothing but absolute quiet, can save him," the doctor said. And so the bells were not rung for service; the carts and other vehicles that generally came rattling past the vicarage gate were now turned back at the top of the street, for a faithful guard was always set there to stop all traffic that way.

It was old Greenacre's idea. "That there rattlin' is 'mazin' bad for the 'hid,'" he said--"I mind that whin I was ill threugh bein' thrown off a wagon when I was a booy--and they didn't ought ter pass this way." So he established himself on a chair under the shadow of the garden wall, and sat patiently watching the egress through many a long hour, keeping the street. "Jest like a beggar with a tin mug and a paper pinned on his chist," said Corkam, who couldn't resist a sneer. But old Jimmy was not there all day, for there were grateful convalescents in the persons of Tom Chapman and his friends, who took their turn as sentry.

So the sick man, so carefully tended within and so guarded without, still hung on between life and death. And as he lay there powerless and speechless, that fickle jade Popularity stole back to his side. Shyly, shamefacedly, almost fearfully, people began to speak well of the man who was in all probability going to give his life for their well-being. He had had the grace to "ketch th' faver" just like one of themselves, and it was going as hard with him as it had gone with many of their own flesh and blood.

"He warn't so bad after all," they allowed. "'Twarn't so much his fault that there well fell in." They even remembered how he had watched and prayed by the sick-beds. They went so far as to hope he "wouldn't be took." And the doctor, who read them like a book, smiled to himself as he watched the poison of prejudice gradually dying in their hearts, and common sense and a small measure of justice stealing back into their perverted minds.

At last came a day when the good man came gaily down the staircase and opened the door with the welcome words, "A decided change for the better. Please God, we'll pull him through now." And a subdued murmur of joy arose from the little crowd of women and children that gathered every morning round the house to see the doctor go away and hear the latest news.

Foremost among these was Annie Chapman--hard working, untidy, cheery Annie. She has improved very little in any respect except in her household arrangements; but though no power on earth could ever succeed in making her tidy, cleanliness has become her ruling passion. She scrubs, and rubs, and washes everything she can lay her hands on, and no future outbreak of fever or any other disease shall ever, she declares, be laid to her door. So out of evil will come good, and the Willowton of the future promises to be a very different place from the fever haunt it has been for the past half-century, if the doctor and the vicar and Annie Chapman can make it so.

And now there only remains for us to see how things fared with Geo Lummis, who so suddenly found himself acting so important a part in the annals of the village. Dr. Davies was anxious to keep him under his eye as a professional man-nurse; but Geo struck at that. He was very glad, he said, to have been of use to the gentlemen, both of them, but sick-nursing was no work for him. He pined for the fresh air and the open fields, and, if the truth must be known, for the ripple of the water under the bridge. Not that he meant to return either to his old ways or his old companions, for he has done with Corkam for ever; and Milly Greenacre and he have made their minds to be married as soon as the vicar is well enough to marry them. And as if wonders would never cease, Milly's scruples about leaving her old grandfather alone have all been removed in the most unexpected manner. While Geo has been nursing the vicar all the past month, old Jimmy had been spending all his odd moments with Mrs. Lummis, with the result that he and Geo are going to play at "puss in the corner," and there are going to be two weddings instead of one! Geo is coming to live in the Greenacres' pretty cottage, and old Jimmy is going to hang up his hat on Geo's old peg in his mother's house. A more satisfactory arrangement of all parties could not be imagined: for Jimmy has saved quite a little hoard of money, enough to keep him comfortable, he hopes, for the rest of his life; and Geo has been taken on as a farm labourer by Mr. Barlow, with the promise of an extra teamster's place, and he is looking forward to getting his seven pounds for the harvest which is now about to begin, after which he and Milly are to be made man and wife.

THE END