CHAPTER VIII.

BY the time that the weather became settled in the spring, Robert's health was again fully established, and he was able to do more work than ever. His horticultural tastes found full scope in Mrs. Huntley's flower-garden, which garden was her especial pet, and the pride of her heart. She had never allowed any former gardener to set foot within its sacred boundaries, but Robert displayed such genuine love for her favorites, and went into such ecstasies over the first bunch of blue and white hyacinths, that she allowed him henceforth to assist her in all her nice operations, and even to weed, and hoe, and rake, when she was not there to overlook him. Besides, he reigned supreme over the kitchen-garden, tying up raspberries, trimming currant-bushes, and planting seeds according to his own pleasure, and evincing so much discretion and taste, that the Doctor had seldom occasion to interfere with his arrangements.

As he could not, of course, attend to his garden at home, Dr. George allowed him to cultivate, on his own account, a small piece of ground at the back of the orchard. Here he planted the seeds he had purchased with his own money, and here Benny and Mark, coming up before and after school, received their first lessons in the sublime art of weeding onions.

Celia continued her work in the factor where some changes had occurred, which made a decided change for the worse in her situation. In the first place, Mr. Westall married and went away to the city, his place being supplied by an overseer who took no interest in the hands, except to see that they did not slight their work. He allowed them to talk as much, and on such subjects as they pleased, and as many of the girls had been far from well brought up, Celia often heard things which made her feel very uncomfortably, and wish herself anywhere else. A year before, she would have been in great danger, but now she had a principle within, which might possibly preserve her from contamination. Still she would sometimes find herself listening to the stories related by her companions in the intervals of labor, and thinking of them afterwards, and though she always checked herself as soon as she became aware of it, it made her very unhappy.

Her two friends Miss Green and Ruth Cummings, also left the mill, the one to teach a little school in a neighboring village, the other to go into a family, to do house-work. Miss Green strongly urged Celia to do the same, as soon as she possibly could.

"The mill is no place for you now, Celia; things are entirely changed there. Mr. Smith takes no sort of oversight of the girls' doings, and some of them are up to any sort of mischief. You are young, and likely enough to be led astray, and I should certainly advise you to get a place in some respectable family as soon as possible."

"Lydia Hinds says she would not work in a family for any thing," observed Celia. "She says she lived with Mrs. Ainsworth once, and that she could not go out anywhere without coming to ask, and telling where she was going, and Mrs. Ainsworth would not let her be out after nine o'clock."

"Lydia Hinds is a foolish, giddy girl," returned Miss Green with some severity; "and if you listen to her, you will be certain to get into trouble. The things of which she complains, are the very ones which should make a sensible girl like her place. Do you suppose Miss Maude Huntley ever goes anywhere, without first asking her mother?"

"No!" replied Celia. "I know she does not, and her mother is very particular about always knowing where she is. One night while Robert was sick, Miss Maude went home from school with one of the young ladies, and staid till nine o'clock, without telling her mother where she was going, and Mrs. Huntley was very much displeased about it. But all mothers are not so very particular."

"Nor all mistresses, but all sensible ones are, especially with girls of your age. If you live with a lady, you should always go to her, just as if she were your mother, and never do any thing without asking. A great many giddy girls I know, prefer to live in rooms by themselves, and take in sewing, or work in the mills, instead of going into families, because they fancy it is a fine thing to be independent; and a nice piece of work they make of it sometimes."

"I should like to live in a family, I am sure," said Celia; "and I would look for a place in a minute, if mother would let me, but she won't. She says I ought to have more self-respect than to think of such a thing. But for my part, I think that people who are not above being helped by the poor-master, should not feel bad about going out to work."

"Pride takes all sorts of curious shapes, my dear. But now bear in mind what I say, and get a place as soon as you can. Don't have any thing to do with the foolish talk of the girls about beaux and such things; and don't listen to them if you can help it. Above all, be very careful what you read. I have seen Lydia finds reading such books as any decent girl ought to be ashamed to look into; and nine tenths of the yellow and green-covered pamphlets which the girls have among them, are not fit to light a fire with. Let them all alone; that is the best way for you. You can procure books enough from the district and parish library, to occupy your leisure hours without running any risk of getting what is not proper for you. Well, my dear, I have preached you quite a sermon; I hope I have not tired you."

"No, indeed!" replied Celia. "I could hear you preach all day without being tired."

"Then I will add a little more. You will have a new teacher in Sunday-school, I presume, or perhaps be put into one of the larger classes. Do not fail to go every Sunday, and to have your lessons perfectly. I hope, Celia, that you love to read your Bible?"

"Yes, ma'am!"

"And to pray?"

"Yes ma'am," returned Celia in a lower tone.

"Then, my dear, remember that these two things must be your great safe-guards. Whenever you find yourself tempted to do wrong, as you will often be, pray for strength to resist that temptation; whenever you feel that you have sinned in any way, lose no time in asking forgiveness and strength for the future. When you are perplexed and troubled and know not which way to turn, go to God, and ask Him to enlighten you; cast all your desires and plans before him, and he will make your way very plain before you. God bless and keep you, my dear! I feel badly about leaving you here, in the midst of so much evil; but I hope He will soon show you a way out of it."

Celia felt forlorn enough, when Miss Green and Ruth were both gone, and she could hardly bear to go into the mill, next day; but there was no help for it, so she went, fully resolved to attend only to her work, and have nothing to do with the follies of the girls. For many days, she persevered in this resolution, but after a while she became careless, and relaxed her guard. She began to listen with interest to the talk and stories of the girls, and even joined in them herself. She went out walking in the evening once or twice, with Lydia Hinds, and one or two of her male associates; but chancing, happily for her, to meet Robert on one of these occasions, he gave her such a lecture on the subject, that she was afraid to do it again.

Still, she talked with Lydia and listened to her, and thus having begun a degree of intimacy, she found it hard to leave off. Then she began to read a little at a time, in some of the books, that Miss Green had cautioned her against, and finally went so far as to borrow one of them, and take it home with her. Her Bible lost its interest for her, and lay neglected day after day; her Sunday-school lessons were very badly learned, and she began to feel ashamed, when her new friend laughed at her for going every Sunday, like a little girl. Thus she was once more in the downward way, which might have led her to utter destruction, had she not been mercifully arrested, before she had taken any fatal step.

It was very warm weather. The authorities of Grandville were not remarkably careful about cleaning the streets, and keeping the sewers in order, despite the energetic representations of Dr. George, and his brother-in-law. Mr. Ellison talked sanitary reform with all his might, and threatened to preach a sermon about it, but all to very little purpose. People were still allowed to keep pigs in their back-gardens, and to pour their slops into the street to dry away in the sun. Mr. Haylett still rented the Union for a drinking-house, and got a good rent for it, too, though the drains were all stopped up, and the cellars filled with water. Mr. Jones was not forced to remove his slaughter-house, though it was a terrible nuisance to all the thickly-settled neighborhood; to be sure, none but poor Dutch and Irish families lived there. And when Dr. George complained that the streets were never cleaned, that the drains were very offensive, and that all sorts of rubbish was thrown into the river, now very low, as was usual at that season, he only got himself laughed at, for being so notional.

Well, by and by people began to talk about the cholera. It had made its appearance in the neighboring city of B., and was very bad there, and a great many people were leaving the city in consequence; so the Grandville people stopped going to B. to do their shopping, greatly to the delight of the merchants in the village, who were much benefited thereby. The doctor and the minister urged more and more strongly the necessity of taking urgent measures to cleanse and purify the village, and now people began to be seriously angry with them for trying to create a panic.

"Did not every one know," Mr. Haylett said, "that people were very often frightened into the disorder? Nothing could be worse than to go and make every one think that they must certainly have the disorder; such measures would be certain to bring it on." He even did not scruple to accuse the Doctor of trying to serve his own ends in getting customers for himself. As for Mr. Ellison, Mr. Haylett was of opinion that a minister's business was to preach the Gospel, and not to go poking round among the lower classes, looking into their cellars and cisterns, and trying to make them discontented with their houses and their landlords.

By and by, a man who lived down near the slaughter-house, in one of Mr. Haylett's tenements, died very suddenly. He went home from his work, in the afternoon, a little unwell, and before morning he was dead; so sudden was he taken, that there was no time to send for a doctor. It was cholera morbus—clearly cholera morbus, Mr. Haylett said—at the same time taking good care to keep away from that part of the village.

But Dr. Huntley talked with the priest, who, the man being a Roman Catholic, had been sent for in his last moments, and made up his own mind as to the matter. Mr. O'Brien had seen a great deal of the disease during his ministrations in the neighboring city, and he had no hesitation in telling the Doctor that he considered it a clear case of cholera, adding, that in his opinion, it would not be the last.

Dr. George thought so, too, and so it proved. He was sent for, before night, to see the wife of the man who was first attacked; and before the next evening not only this woman, but another in the same house, had died, and two or three of the neighbors lay sick enough. There was no doubt now of the nature of the disease, though many people still persisted that there was no danger, and declaimed angrily enough against those who, by active sanitary measures, wished to "create a panic."

The merchants were very indignant at the proposition made by Mr. Ellison, that the number of cases should be published daily, (Grandville, as became a place of its importance, had a daily paper,) in order that people might know exactly how bad the disease was, and not be deceived by rumors which always made things appear worse than they really were. So it went on from day to day, and nothing was done that should have been done. The pestilence increased frightfully. Dr. George and Mr. Ellison were called upon at all hours of the day and night; whole families were prostrated at once in the poorer parts of the village, and people began to wonder where it would end.

In the midst of the distress, Celia came home from the factory rather late one night to find Benny quite unwell, complaining of pain and sickness at the stomach. He was rather subject to such attacks, so she was not at all alarmed. But after giving him a little hot tea and bathing his feet, she put him to bed early, and thought little more about the matter, except to visit him again before she retired, when she found him sleeping soundly. Her own bed-room was next to that of the boys, and she was awakened from her first nap to find little Mark crying by her bed.

"Benny is very sick," he said. "I can't make him say any thing that I can understand, only he says his feet cramp. Do get up and see him."

"You must run for the doctor, Mark," she said as soon as she had a look at Benny; "I am afraid he is very sick indeed."

"I am afraid to go in the dark," said Mark, crying afresh. "Jim Dolan says there is a ghost down by the old church that comes out at night."

"Jim Dolan is a dunce," replied Celia. "Come, Mark, dear, do go as quick as you can. Nothing will hurt you; there are no such thing as ghosts, you know."

"Oh! But there are!" persisted Mark. "For Jim's father saw this one once, and it chased him."

"Well, then, stay here and I will go myself; I am not afraid of the ghost."

But Mark was as unwilling to stay alone with Benny as to go alone for the doctor, and Celia concluded that she must call her mother and leave her with Ben while she did her errand herself.

She did not take much by her motion. Mrs. Merritt, peevish at being awakened, at first insisted that nothing more than common ailed the child, and that it was nonsense to send for the doctor. Finally, when she did get frightened, she would not be left alone either, and thus a precious hour was wasted in useless remonstrances, the boy all the time growing worse.

Finally, just as Celia was getting desperate, she heard some one passing in the street. The firm, steady step and clear whistle of the stranger showed that he was sober, at any rate, and she opened the window and called, "Who is there?"

"Hullo," was the answer, "any thing the matter?"

"Yes," replied Celia, "my little brother is very sick. I am afraid he is dying, and I have no one to send for the doctor."

"I'll send him," replied the man at once, "I am going right past there. Who shall I say wants him?"

"Celia Merritt, and please tell him to make haste; and, oh! Do tell my brother Robert to come home directly. He lives at the Doctor's. Tell him Benny is very sick."

The stranger set off on his errand of kindness, with an apparent hearty good will, and after what seemed an age to poor Celia, Robert made his appearance, but without the Doctor. He had been called in another direction, and Mrs. Huntley promised to send him the moment he came in. Meantime she had given Robert careful directions what to do in case the child should be very ill.

Very ill indeed he was, and grew worse every moment, despite the care of his brother and sister, so that when the Doctor appeared, as he did about five o'clock in the morning, the case was hopeless. The child was in the last stages of collapse, and died a few minutes after sunrise. As soon as possible, a coffin was procured, and at sunset Robert and Celia saw him deposited in his last resting-place by the side of his baby sister.

This was a terrible blow to Celia; she was not exactly aware how far she had wandered from the right way till it came upon her; but now she naturally sought refuge in prayer, and was distressed that it did not as formerly afford her relief in her distress. There now seemed no one to hear her; her attention wandered in spite of herself, and thoughts from the book she had lately been reading—such thoughts as she had indulged with pleasure—haunted her, showing themselves in all their true ugliness. How deeply now did she repent having forgotten the councils of her truest friend, and silenced the voice of her own conscience, as she had done of late. Bitterly, bitterly she wept, and most earnestly she prayed for forgiveness; and when at last, in answer to her prayers, a degree of peace was vouchsafed to her, she felt humbled in the very dust as she thought of what she had done.

But she had little time for thought now, and perhaps it was as well for her that all her attention was necessarily occupied. Before the next morning, Mark was attacked with the same disease, and though his case was taken in time to save his life, he was very ill for some days, and required constant attention. At last he grew better, and was able to sit up, and Celia began to hope that the worst was over, and that she and her brother might be able to take the rest they so much needed.

One day, when she had been out to do some marketing, and returned, she found her mother eating some cherries which one of the neighbors had given her.

"Why, mother!" she exclaimed in terror. "How can you eat those things? You will surely have the cholera. Don't you know the Doctor said there could be nothing worse than sour fruit?"

"They are not sour; they are as ripe as they can be."

"But pray don't eat any more; I hope you have not given Mark any of them."

"I am not such a fool as to give fruit to a sick child, I hope. Of course I have not; but there is no danger of their hurting me," she continued, finishing the last of them as she spoke.

Celia was distressed and terrified; but there was nothing to be done, except to watch the first approach of the malady, and meet it in time. For some time no bad symptoms appeared, and she hoped that she might have been alarmed for nothing. But the next day showed that she was mistaken: before the evening of the third day, Mrs. Merritt was dying in spite of all that could be done to save her.

As she bent over the body of her mother, now as cold as a corpse, and almost breathless, Celia forgot all that had been wrong; she forgot the indolence, the shiftlessness, the false pride, and remembered only what was good. She thought now of the young woman who came to the house as her father's second wife, when Robert was seven and she six years old; how pretty and neat she was, and how kindly she had talked to them, the first night that she put them to bed. She remembered how much more comfortable they were for a long time after she came, till illness and discomfort had made her indolent, and the removal of her own family had taken away the spur which prompted her to show them that all their predictions of misery were unfounded.

How she longed to have her speak once more; to have her show some signs of intelligence, that she might ask her pardon for the many instances of disrespect and disobedience of which she painfully felt she had been guilty. But the poor soul never spoke nor opened her eyes again; and not long after sunset, her children closed her eyes and prepared her for the grave as decently as they could; the husband for whose sake she had deserted her home and broken the hearts of her parents, lying in a state of stupid intoxication in the next room. How very very seldom do runaway matches turn out happily! We almost wish they never did.

In three days' time, the house was deserted. Mark who was almost entirely recovered, was taken to board by a kind neighbor, till he could be placed as an apprentice with some respectable farmer or mechanic. While Mr. Merritt, who had not been sober for three weeks, was taken to the poor-house. At first, Robert could not hear of such a thing; but he yielded at last to the representations of the poor-master and the Doctor.

"Your father will be perfectly comfortable there," said good Mr. Wheeler; "you can go and see him whenever you please, and above all, he will not have any thing to drink there."

This last argument was decisive. Robert could not help hoping, that when his father was entirely out of the sight and reach of liquor, he might perhaps reform. Dr. George was not very sanguine, but he held his peace and allowed the children to please themselves with the prospect of their father's amendment. Celia went to Mrs. Vanderburgh's to stay a while, till she could put her clothes in order, and till her friends could find her a place. She at first inclined to a situation in the village, but this was decidedly opposed by Robert; for though he felt that he should miss his sister sadly, he was most desirous to see her placed out of the reach of all her factory associations, of which he knew the danger much better than she did.

Celia herself had the sense to see the force of her brother's representations, and hearing that Mrs. Dennison's girl had left her, she requested her kind friend, Mrs. Huntley, to obtain the place for her. Mrs. Dennison was quite willing to make trial of any body whom Mrs. Huntley recommended, and thus the affair was finally settled.