Chapter THE FIFTH: My revenge on the Skitzlanders

By great good fortune, they had planted their artillery so well, that I was fired up through my hole again, and alighted in my own garden, just a little singed. My first thought was to run to an adjoining bed of vegetable marrows. Thirty vegetable marrows and two pumpkins I rained down to astonish the Skitzlanders, and I fervently hope that one of them may have knocked out the remaining eye of my vindictive enemy, the Baron. I then went into the pantry, and obtained a basket full of eggs, and having rained these down upon the Skitzlanders, I left them.

It was after breakfast when I went down to Skitzland, and I came back while the dinner bell was ringing.

BIRTH SONG.

Hail, new-waked atom of the Eternal whole,
Young voyager upon Time’s mighty river!
Hail to thee, Human Soul,
Hail, and for ever!
Pilgrim of life, all hail!
He who at first called forth
From nothingness the earth,
Who clothed the hills in strength, and dug the sea;
Who gave the stars to gem
Night, like a diadem,
Thou little child, made thee;
Young habitant of earth,
Fair as its flowers, though brought in sorrow forth,
Thou art akin to God who fashioned thee!

The Heavens themselves shall vanish as a scroll,
The solid earth dissolve, the stars grow pale,
But thou, oh Human Soul,
Shalt be immortal! Hail!
Thou young Immortal, hail!
He, before whom are dim
Seraph and cherubim,
Who gave the archangels strength and majesty,
Who sits upon Heaven’s throne,
The Everlasting One,
Thou little child, made thee!
Fair habitant of Earth,
Immortal in thy God, though mortal by thy birth,
Born for life’s trials, hail, all hail to thee!

SONG OF DEATH.

Shrink not, O Human Spirit,
The Everlasting Arm is strong to save!
Look up, look up, frail nature, put thy trust
In Him who went down mourning to the dust,
And overcame the grave!
Quickly goes down the sun;
Life’s work is almost done;
Fruitless endeavour, hope deferred, and strife!
One little struggle more,
One pang, and then is o’er
All the long, mournful, weariness of life.
Kind friends, ’tis almost past;
Come now and look your last!
Sweet children, gather near,
And his last blessing hear,
See how he loved you who departeth now!
And, with thy trembling step and pallid brow,
O, most beloved one,
Whose breast he leaned upon,
Come, faithful unto death,
Receive his parting breath!
The fluttering spirit panteth to be free,
Hold him not back who speeds to victory!
—The bonds are riven, the struggling soul is free!

Hail, hail, enfranchised Spirit!
Thou that the wine-press of the field hast trod!
On, blest Immortal, on, through boundless space,
And stand with thy Redeemer face to face;
And stand before thy God!
Life’s weary work is o’er,
Thou art of earth no more;
No more art trammelled by the oppressive clay,
But tread’st with winged ease
The high acclivities
Of truths sublime, up Heaven’s crystalline way.
Here no bootless quest;
This city’s name is Rest;
Here shall no fear appal;
Here love is all in all;
Here shalt thou win thy ardent soul’s desire;
Here clothe thee in thy beautiful attire.
Lift, lift thy wond’ring eyes!
Yonder is Paradise,
And this fair shining band
Are spirits of thy land!
And these who throng to meet thee are thy kin,
Who have awaited thee, redeemed from sin!
—The city’s gates unfold—enter, oh! enter in!

THE SICKNESS AND HEALTH OF THE PEOPLE OF BLEABURN.

IN THREE PARTS.—CHAPTER III.

Mr. Finch was standing in front of his bookcase, deeply occupied in ascertaining a point in ecclesiastical history, when he was told that Ann Warrender wished to speak to him.

“O dear!” he half-breathed out. He had for some time been growing nervous about the state of things at Bleaburn; and there was nothing he now liked so little as to be obliged to speak face to face with any of the people. It was not all cowardice; though cowardice made up sadly too much of it. He did not very well know how to address the minds of his people; and he felt that he could not do it well. He was more fit for closet study than for the duties of a parish priest; and he ought never to have been sent to Bleaburn. Here he was, however; and there was Ann Warrender waiting in the passage to speak to him.

“Dear me!” said he, “I am really very busy at this moment. Ask Ann Warrender if she can come again to-morrow.”

To-morrow would not do. Ann followed the servant to the door of the study to say so. Mr. Finch hastily asked her to wait a moment, and shut the door behind the servant. He unlocked a cupboard, took out a green bottle and a wineglass, and fortified himself against infection with a draught of something whose scent betrayed him to Ann the moment the door was again opened.

“Come in,” said he, when the cupboard was locked.

“Will you please come, sir, and see John Billiter? He is not far from death; he asked for you just now; so I said I would step for you.”

“Billiter! The fever has been very fatal in that house, has it not? Did not he lose two children last week?”

“Yes, sir; and my father thinks the other two are beginning to sicken. I’m sure I don’t know what will become of them. I saw Mrs. Billiter stagger as she crossed the room just now; and she does not seem, somehow, to be altogether like herself this morning. That looks as if she were beginning. But if you will come and pray with them, Sir, that is the comfort they say they want.”

“Does your father allow you to go to an infected house like that?” asked Mr. Finch. “And does he go himself?”

Ann looked surprised, and said she did not see what else could be done. There was no one but her father who could lift John Billiter, or turn him in his bed; and as for her, she was the only one that Mrs. Billiter had to look to, day and night. The Good Lady went in very often, and did all she could; but she was wanted in so many places, besides having her hands full with the Johnsons, that she could only come in and direct and cheer them, every few hours. She desired to be sent for at any time, night or day; and they did send when they were particularly distressed, or at a loss; but for regular watching and nursing, Ann said the Billiters had no one to depend on but herself. She could not stay talking now, however. How soon might she say that Mr. Finch would come?

Mr. Finch was now walking up and down the room. He said he would consider, and let her know as soon as he could.

“John Billiter is as bad as can be, Sir. He must be very near his end.”

“Ah! well; you shall hear from me very soon.”

As Ann went away, she wondered what could be the impediment to Mr. Finch’s going with her. He, meantime, roused his mind to undertake a great argument of duty. It was with a sense of complacency, even of elevation, that he now set himself to work to consider of his duty—determined to do it when his mind was made up.

He afterwards declared that he went to his chamber to be secure against interruption, and there walked up and down for two hours in meditation and prayer. He considered that it had pleased God that he should be the only son of his mother, whose whole life would be desolate if he should die. He thought of Ellen Price, feeling almost sure that she would marry him whenever he felt justified in asking her; and he considered what a life of happiness she would lose if he should die. He remembered that his praying with the sick would not affect life on the one side, while it might on the other. The longer he thought of Ellen Price and of his mother, and of all that he might do if he lived, the more clear did his duty seem to himself to become. At the end of the two hours, he was obliged to bring his meditations to a conclusion; for Ann Warrender’s father had been waiting for some time to speak to him, and would then wait no longer.

“It is not time lost, Warrender,” said Mr. Finch, when at last he came down stairs. “I have been determining my principle, and my mind is made up.”

“Then, Sir, let us be off, or the man will be dead. What! you cannot come, Sir! Why, bless my soul!”

“You see my reasons, surely, Warrender.”

“Why, yes; such as they are. The thing that I can’t see the reason for, is your being a clergyman.”

While Mr. Finch was giving forth his amiable and gentlemanly notions of the position of a clergyman in society, and of filial consideration, Warrender was twirling his hat, and fidgetting, as if in haste; and his summing up was——

“I don’t know what your mother herself might say, Sir, to your consideration for her; but most likely she has, being a mother, noticed that saying about a man leaving father and mother, and houses and lands, for Christ’s sake; and also——But it is no business of mine to be preaching to the clergyman, and I have enough to do, elsewhere.”

“One thing more, Warrender. I entrust it to you to let the people know that there will be no service in church during the infection. Why, do not you know that, in the time of the plague, the churches were closed by order, because it was found that the people gave one another the disease, by meeting there?”

John had never heard it; and he was sorry to hear it now. He hastened away to the Good Lady, to ask her if he must really tell the afflicted people that all religious comfort mast be withheld from them now, when they were in the utmost need of it. Meantime, Mr. Finch was entering at length in his diary, the history of his conflict of mind, his decision, and the reasons of it.

Henceforth, Mr. Finch had less time for his diary, and for clearing up points of ecclesiastical history. There were so many funerals that he could never be sure of leisure; nor, when he had it, was he in a state to use it. Sometimes he almost doubted whether he was in his right mind, so overwhelmingly dreadful to him was the scene around him. He met Farmer Neale one day. Neale was at his wit’s end what to do about his harvest. Several of his labourers were dead, and others were kept aloof by his own servants, who declared they would all leave him if any person from Bleaburn was brought among them; and no labourers from a distance would come near the place. Farmer Neale saw no other prospect than of his crops rotting on the ground.

“You must offer high wages,” said Mr. Finch. “You must be well aware that you do not generally tempt people into your service by your rate of wages. You must open your hand at such a time as this.”

Neale was ready enough now to give good wages; but nobody would reap an acre of his for love or money. He was told to be thankful that the fever had spared his house; but he said it was no use bidding a man be thankful for anything, while he saw his crops perishing on the ground.

Next, Mr. Finch saw, in his afternoon ride, a waggon-load of coffins arrive at the brow from O——. He saw them sent down, one by one, on men’s shoulders, to be ranged in the carpenter’s yard. The carpenter could not work fast enough; and his stock of wood was so nearly exhausted that there had been complaints, within the last few days, that the coffins would not bear the least shock, but fell to pieces when the grave was opened for the next. So an order was sent to O—— for coffins of various sizes; and now they were carried down the road, and up the street, before the eyes of some who were to inhabit one or another of them. The doctor, hurrying from house to house, had hardly a moment to spare, and no comfort to give. He did not see what there was to prevent the whole population from being swept away. He was himself almost worn out; and just at such a moment, his surgery boy had disappeared. He had no one that he could depend on to help him in making up the medicines, or even to deliver them. The fact was, he said in private, the place was a pest-house; and, except to Miss Pickard, he did not know where to look for any aid or any hope whatever. It would not do to say so to the people; but, frankly speaking, this was what he felt. When the pastor’s heart was thus sunk very low, he thought he would just pass the Plough and Harrow, and see who was there. If there were any cheerful people in Bleaburn, that was where they would be found. At the Plough and Harrow, the floor was swept and the table was clean; and the chimney was prettily dressed with green boughs; but there were only two customers there; and they were smoking their pipes in silence. The landlord said the scores were run up so high, he could not give more credit till better days. The people wanted their draught of comfort badly enough, and he had given it as long as he could; but he must stop somewhere: and if the baker had to stop scores (as he knew he had) the publican had little chance of getting his own. At such a time, however, he knew men ought to be liberal; so he went on serving purl and bitters at five in the morning. The men said it strengthened their stomachs against the fever before they went to work (such of them as could work) and God forbid he should refuse them that! But he knew the half of those few that came at five in the morning would never be able to pay their score. Yet did the publican, amidst all these losses, invite the pastor to sit down and have a cheerful glass; and the pastor did not refuse. There was too little cheerfulness to be had at present to justify him in declining any offer of it. So he let the landlord mix his glass for him, and mix it strong.

It was easy to make the mixture strong; but not so easy to have a ‘cheerful glass.’ The host had too many dismal stories to tell for that; and, when he could be diverted from the theme of the fate of Bleaburn, it was only to talk of the old king’s madness, and the disasters of the war, and the weight of the taxes, and the high price of food, and the riots in the manufacturing districts; a long string of disasters all undeniably true. He was just saying that he had been assured that something would soon appear which would explain the terrors of the time, when a strange cry was heard in the street, and a bustle among the neighbours; and then two or three people ran in and exclaimed, with white lips, that there was a fearful sign in the sky.

There indeed it was, a lustrous thing, shining down into the hollow. Was there ever such a star seen,—as large as a saucer—some of the people said, and with a long white tail, which looked as if it was about to sweep all the common stars out of the sky! The sounds of amazement and fear that ran along the whole street, up and down, brought the neighbours to their doors; and some to the windows, to try how much they could see from windows that would not open. Each one asked somebody else what it was; but all agreed that it was a token of judgment, and that it accounted for everything; the cold spring, the bad crops, the king’s illness, the war, and this dreadful sickly autumn. At last, they bethought them of the pastor, and they crowded round him for an explanation. They received one in a tone so faltering as to confirm their fears, though Mr. Finch declared that it certainly must be a comet: he had never seen a comet; but he was confident this must be one, and that it must be very near the earth:—he did not mean near enough to do any harm;—it was all nonsense talking of comets doing any harm.

“Will it do us any good, Sir?” asked the carpenter, sagely.

“Not that I know of. How should it do us any good?

“Exactly so, Sir: that is what we say. It is there for no good, you may rely upon it: and, for the rest, Heaven knows!”

“I hope farmer Neale may be seeing it,” observed a man to his neighbour. “It may be a mercy to him, if it is sent to warn him of his hard ways.”

“And the doctor, too. I hope it will take effect upon him,” whispered another. The whisper was caught up and spread. “The doctor! the doctor!” every one said, glancing at the comet, and falling to whispering again.

“What are they saying about the doctor?” whispered Mr. Finch to the landlord. “What is the matter about him?” But the landlord only shook his head, and looked excessively solemn in the yellow light which streamed from his open door. After this, Mr. Finch was very silent, and soon stole away homewards. Some who watched him said that he was more alarmed than he chose to show. And this was true. He was more shaken than he chose to admit to his own mind. He would not have acknowledged to himself that he, an educated man, could be afraid of a comet: but, unnerved before by anxiety of mind, and a stronger dose of spirit and water than he had intended to take, he was as open to impression as in the most timid days of his childhood. As he sat in his study, the bright, silent, steady luminary seemed to be still shining full upon his very heart and brain: and the shadowy street, with its groups of gazers, was before his eyes; and the hoarse or whimpering voices of the terrified people were in his ear. He covered his eyes, and thought that he lived in fearful times. He wished he was asleep: but then, there were three funerals for to-morrow! He feared he could not sleep, if he went to bed. Yet, to sit up would be worse; for he could not study to-night, and sitting up was the most wearing thing of all to the nerves. Presently he went to his cupboard. Now, if ever, was the time for a cordial; for how should he do his duty, if he did not get sleep at night, with so many funerals in the morning? So he poured out his medicine, as he called it, and uncorked his laudanum bottle, and obtained the oblivion which is the best comfort of the incapable.