She had restlessly left her chair before the dressing-table, and was walking to and fro. She paused and stood looking down at the carpet, though she scarcely saw it.
“Nothing matters but one thing—one person,” she owned to herself aloud. “I suppose it is always like this. Rosy, Ughtred, even father and mother—everyone seems less near than they were. It is too strong—too strong. It is–-” the words dropped slowly from her lips, “the strongest thing— in the world.”
She lifted her face and threw out her hands, a lovely young half-sad smile curling the deep corners of her mouth. “Sometimes one feels so disdained,” she said—”so disdained with all one’s power. Perhaps I am an unwanted thing.”
But even in this case there were aids one might make an effort to give. She went to her writing-table and sat thinking for some time. Afterwards she began to write letters. Three or four were addressed to London—one was to Mr. Penzance.
… . .
Mount Dunstan and his vicar were walking through the village to the vicarage. They had been to the hop pickers’ huts to see the people who were ill of the fever. Both of them noticed that cottage doors and windows were shut, and that here and there alarmed faces looked out from behind latticed panes.
“They are in a panic of fear,” Mount Dunstan said, “and by way of safeguard they shut out every breath of air and stifle indoors. Something must be done.”
Catching the eye of a woman who was peering over her short white dimity blind, he beckoned to her authoritatively. She came to the door and hesitated there, curtsying nervously.
Mount Dunstan spoke to her across the hedge.
“You need not come out to me, Mrs. Binner. You may stay where you are,” he said. “Are you obeying the orders given by the Guardians?”
“Yes, my lord. Yes, my lord,” with more curtsys.
“Your health is very much in your own hands,” he added.
“You must keep your cottage and your children cleaner than you have ever kept them before, and you must use the disinfectant I sent you. Keep away from the huts, and open your windows. If you don’t open them, I shall come and do it for you. Bad air is infection itself. Do you understand?”
“Yes, my lord. Thank your lordship.”
“Go in and open your windows now, and tell your neighbours to do the same. If anyone is ill let me know at once. The vicar and I will do our best for everyone.”
By that time curiosity had overcome fear, and other cottage doors had opened. Mount Dunstan passed down the row and said a few words to each woman or man who looked out. Questions were asked anxiously and he answered them. That he was personally unafraid was comfortingly plain, and the mere sight of him was, on the whole, an unexplainable support.
“We heard said your lordship was going away,” put in a stout mother with a heavy child on her arm, a slight testiness scarcely concealed by respectful good-manners. She was a matron with a temper, and that a Mount Dunstan should avoid responsibilities seemed highly credible.
“I shall stay where I am,” Mount Dunstan answered. “My place is here.”
They believed him, Mount Dunstan though he was. It could not be said that they were fond of him, but gradually it had been borne in upon them that his word was to be relied on, though his manner was unalluring and they knew he was too poor to do his duty by them or his estate. As he walked away with the vicar, windows were opened, and in one or two untidy cottages a sudden flourishing of mops and brooms began.
There was dark trouble in Mount Dunstan’s face. In the huts they had left two men stiff on their straw, and two women and a child in a state of collapse. Added to these were others stricken helpless. A number of workers in the hop gardens, on realising the danger threatening them, had gathered together bundles and children, and, leaving the harvest behind, had gone on the tramp again. Those who remained were the weaker or less cautious, or were held by some tie to those who were already ill of the fever. The village doctor was an old man who had spent his blameless life in bringing little cottagers into the world, attending their measles and whooping coughs, and their father’s and grandfather’s rheumatics. He had never faced a village crisis in the course of his seventy-five years, and was aghast and flurried with fright. His methods remained those of his youth, and were marked chiefly by a readiness to prescribe calomel in any emergency. A younger and stronger man was needed, as well as a man of more modern training. But even the most brilliant practitioner of the hour could not have provided shelter and nourishment, and without them his skill would have counted as nothing. For three weeks there had been no rain, which was a condition of the barometer not likely to last. Already grey clouds were gathering and obscuring the blueness of the sky.
The vicar glanced upwards anxiously.
“When it comes,” he said, “there will be a downpour, and a persistent one.”
“Yes,” Mount Dunstan answered.
He had lain awake thinking throughout the night. How was a man to sleep! It was as Betty Vanderpoel had known it would be. He, who—beggar though he might be—was the lord of the land, was the man to face the strait of these poor workers on the land, as his own. Some action must be taken. What action? As he walked by his friend’s side from the huts where the dead men lay it revealed itself that he saw his way.
They were going to the vicarage to consult a medical book, but on the way there they passed a part of the park where, through a break in the timber the huge, white, blind-faced house stood on view. Mount Dunstan laid his hand on Mr. Penzance’s shoulder and stopped him
“Look there!” he said. “THERE are weather-tight rooms enough.”
A startled expression showed itself on the vicar’s face.
“For what?” he exclaimed
“For a hospital,” brusquely “I can give them one thing, at least—shelter.”
“It is a very remarkable thing to think of doing,” Mr. Penzance said.
“It is not so remarkable as that labourers on my land should die at my gate because I cannot give them decent roofs to cover them. There is a roof that will shield them from the weather. They shall be brought to the Mount.”
The vicar was silent a moment, and a flush of sympathy warmed his face.
“You are quite right, Fergus,” he said, “entirely right.”
“Let us go to your study and plan how it shall be done,” Mount Dunstan said.
As they walked towards the vicarage, he went on talking.
“When I lie awake at night, there is one thread which always winds itself through my thoughts whatsoever they are. I don’t find that I can disentangle it. It connects itself with Reuben S. Vanderpoel’s daughter. You would know that without my telling you. If you had ever struggled with an insane passion–-“
“It is not insane, I repeat,” put in Penzance unflinchingly.
“Thank you—whether you are right or wrong,” answered Mount Dunstan, striding by his side. “When I am awake, she is as much a part of my existence as my breath itself. When I think things over, I find that I am asking myself if her thoughts would be like mine. She is a creature of action. Last night, as I lay awake, I said to myself, `She would DO something. What would she do?’ She would not be held back by fear of comment or convention. She would look about her for the utilisable, and she would find it somewhere and use it. I began to sum up the village resources and found nothing—until my thoughts led me to my own house. There it stood—empty and useless. If it were hers, and she stood in my place, she would make it useful. So I decided.”