"They were all living together, night and day, in one room."
This conveyed no very distinct idea to the ladies; but Vizard, for the first time, turned red at this revelation before Uxmoor, improver of cottage life. "Confound the brutes!" said he. "Why, I built them a new room; a larger one: didn"t you see it?"
"Yes. They stack their potatoes in it."
"Just like my people," said Uxmoor. "That is the worst of it: they resist their own improvement."
"Yes, but," said the doctress, "with monarchial power we can trample on them for their good. Outside Marks"s door at the back there is a muck-heap, as he calls it; all the refuse of the house is thrown there; it is a horrible melange of organic matter and decaying vegetables, a hot-bed of fever and malaria. Suffocated and poisoned with the breath of a dozen persons, they open the window for fresh air, and in rushes typhoid from the stronghold its victims have built. Two children were buried from that house last year. They were both killed by the domestic arrangements as certainly as if they had been shot with a double-barreled pistol. The outside roses you admire so are as delusive as flattery; their sweetness covers a foul, unwholesome den."
"Marks"s cottage! The show place of the village!" Zoe Vizard flushed with indignation at the bold hand of truth so rudely applied to a pleasant and cherished illusion.
Vizard, more candid and open to new truths, shrugged his shoulders, and said, "What can I do more than I have done?"
"Oh, it is not your fault," said the doctress, graciously. "It is theirs.
Only, as you are their superior in intelligence and power, you might do something to put down indecency, immorality, and disease."
"May I ask what?"
"Well, you might build a granary for the poor people"s potatoes. No room can keep them dry; but you build your granary upon four pillars: then that is like a room over a cellar."
"Well, I"ll build it so--if I build it at all," said Vizard, dryly. "What next?"
"Then you could make them stack their potatoes in the granary, and use the spare room, and so divide their families, and give morality a chance.
The muck-heap you should disperse at once with the strong hand of power."
At this last proposal, Squire Vizard--the truth must be told--delivered a long, plowman"s whistle at the head of his own table.
"Pheugh!" said he; "for a lady that is more than half republican, you seem to be taking very kindly to monarchial tyranny."
"Well, now, I"ll tell you the truth," said she. "You have converted me.
Ever since you promised me the well, I have discovered that the best form of government is a good-hearted tyrant."
"With a female viceroy over him, eh?"
"Only in these little domestic matters," said Rhoda, deprecatingly.
"Women are good advisers in such things. The male physician relies on drugs. Medical women are wanted to moderate that delusion; to prevent disease by domestic vigilance, and cure it by selected esculents and pure air. These will cure fifty for one that medicine can; besides drugs kill ever so many: these never killed a creature. You will give me the granary, won"t you? Oh, and there"s a black pond in the center of the village. Your tenant Pickett, who is a fool--begging his pardon--lets all his liquid manure run out of his yard into the village till it acc.u.mulates in a pond right opposite the five cottages they call New Town, and its exhalations taint the air. There are as many fevers in Islip as in the back slums of a town. You might fill the pond up with chalk, and compel Pickett to sink a tank in his yard, and cover it; then an agricultural treasure would be preserved for its proper use, instead of being perverted into a source of infection."
Vizard listened civilly, and, as she stopped, requested her to go on.
"I think we have had enough," said Zoe, bitterly.
Rhoda, who was in love with Zoe, hung her head, and said, "Yes; I have been very bold."
"Fiddlestick!" said Vizard. "Never mind those girls. _You_ speak out like a man: a stranger"s eye always discovers things that escape the natives.
Proceed."
"No; I won"t proceed till I have explained to Miss Vizard."
"You may spare yourself the trouble. Miss Vizard thought Islip was a paradise. You have dispelled the illusion, and she will never forgive you. Miss Dover will; because she is like Gallio--she careth for none of these things."
"Not a pin," said f.a.n.n.y, with admirable frankness.
"Well, but," said Rhoda, naively, "I can"t bear Miss Vizard to be angry with me; I admire her so. Please let me explain. Islip is no paradise--quite the reverse; but the faults of Islip are not _your_ faults. The children are ignorant; but you pay for a school. The people are poor from insufficient wages; but you are not paymaster. _Your_ gardeners, _your_ hinds, and all your outdoor people have enough. You give them houses. You let cottages and gardens to the rest at half their value; and very often they don"t pay that, but make excuses; and you accept them, though they are all stories; for they can pay everybody but you, and their one good bargain is with you. Miss Vizard has carried a basket all her life with things from your table for the poor."
Miss Vizard blushed crimson at this sudden revelation.
"If a man or a woman has served your house long, there"s a pension for life. You are easy, kind, and charitable. It is the faults of others I ask you to cure, because you have such power. Now, for instance, if the boys at Hillstoke are putty-faced, the boys at Islip have no calves to their legs. That is a sure sign of deteriorating species. The lower type of savage has next to no calf. The calf is a sign of civilization and due nourishment. This single phenomenon was my clew, and led me to others; and I have examined the mothers and the people of all ages, and I tell you it is a village of starvelings. Here a child begins life a starveling, and ends as he began. The nursing mother has not food enough for one, far less for two. The man"s wages are insufficient, and the diet is not only insufficient, but injudicious. The race has declined. There are only five really big, strong men--Josh Grace, Will Hudson, David Wilder, Absalom Green, and Jack Greenaway; and they are all over fifty--men of another generation. I have questioned these men how they were bred, and they all say milk was common when they were boys. Many poor people kept a cow; squire doled it; the farmers gave it or sold it cheap; but nowadays it is scarcely to be had. Now, that is not your fault, but you are the man who can mend it. New milk is meat and drink especially to young and growing people. You have a large meadow at the back of the village. If you could be persuaded to start four or five cows, and let somebody sell the new milk to the poor at cost price--say, five farthings the quart. You must not give it, or they will water their muckheaps with it. With those cows alone you will get rid, in the next generation, of the half-grown, slouching men, the hollow-eyed, narrow-chested, round-backed women, and the calfless boys one sees all over Islip, and restore the stalwart race that filled the little village under your sires and have left proofs of their wholesome food on the tombstones: for I have read every inscription, and far more people reached eighty-five between 1750 and 1800 than between 1820 and 1870. Ah, how I envy you to be able to do such great things so easily! Water to poisoned Hillstoke with one hand; milk to starved Islip with the other.
This is to be indeed a king!"
The enthusiast rose from the table in her excitement, and her face was transfigured; she looked beautiful for the moment.
"I"ll do it," shouted Vizard; "and you are a trump."
Miss Gale sat down, and the color left her cheek entirely.
f.a.n.n.y Dover, who had a very quick eye for pa.s.sing events, cried out, "Oh dear! she is going to faint _now."_ The tone implied, what a plague she is!
Thereupon Severne rushed to her, and was going to sprinkle her face; but she faltered, "No! no! a gla.s.s of wine." He gave her one with all the hurry and empress.e.m.e.nt in the world. She fixed him with a strange look as she took it from him: she sipped it; one tear ran into it. She said she had excited herself; but she was all right now. Elastic Rhoda!
"I am very glad of it," said Vizard. "You are quite strong enough without fainting. For Heaven"s sake, don"t add woman"s weakness to your artillery, or you will be irresistible; and I shall have to divide Vizard Court among the villagers. At present I get off cheap, and Science on the Rampage: let me see--only a granary, a well, and six cows."
"They"ll give as much milk as twelve cows without the well," said f.a.n.n.y.
It was her day for wit.
This time she was rewarded with a general laugh.
It subsided, as such things will, and then Vizard said, solemnly, "New ideas are suggested to me by this charming interview; and permit me to give them a form, which will doubtless be new to these accomplished ladies:
""Gin there"s a hole in a" your coats, I rede ye tent it; A chiel"s amang ye takin" notes, And, faith, he"ll prent it.""
Zoe looked puzzled, and f.a.n.n.y inquired what language that was.
"Very good language."
"Then perhaps you will translate it into language one can understand."
"The English of the day, eh?"
"Yes."
"You think that would improve it, do you? Well, then:
"If there is a defect in any one of your habilimeats, Let me earnestly impress on you the expediency of repairing it; An individual is among you with singular powers of observation, Which will infallibly result in printing and publication."
Zoe, you are an affectionate sister; take this too observant lady into the garden, poison her with raw fruit, and bury her under a pear tree."
Zoe said she would carry out part of the programme, if Miss Gale would come.