Читать книгу The Challenge of Love (Musaicum Romance Classics) - Victorian Romance Novel - Страница 7

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Wolfe had been nearly three months in Navestock, and his map of the town had grown into a gaily coloured patchwork, with the River Wraith running through it as a silver streak, and the outlying meadows and gardens coloured a vivid green. A box of crayons had served to give breadth of expression to his researches. Red was his colour of utter condemnation. Brown stood for strong censure; yellow for milder offences; blue for the neighbourhoods that were comparatively healthy. A mere glance at this colour plan showed red extending over all the low-lying ground about the river. Streaks of red spread themselves like veins over the whole town. Brown predominated in the crowded streets about Turrell’s brewery. The market square, some of the main streets, and the more aristocratic residential quarters were coloured yellow. The only blue areas were Mulberry Green, High Elms and old Josiah Crabbe’s quarter of Peachy Hill.

On the map were little symbolic signs drawn with a fine pen. A circle denoted a polluted well; a deep black line, a foul ditch or open sewer; a cross, an insanitary backyard; a square, an accumulation of rubbish. Facts had crowded in upon Wolfe. It was as though they had been waiting for years for someone to notice them, and sprang at the first man who did not wish to have them ignored. Yet Wolfe lost no opportunities. There were few places in the poorer parts of the town into which his work did not take him, and he toiled through a dozen of old Threadgold’s day-books and death-registers, sifting and grouping statistics. The better-class quarters were beyond him in some measure, but he was content to conclude that they were not of great importance. His researches were concentrated upon the low-lying quarters by the river; upon Peachy Hill, because of the contrasts it appeared to offer; and upon the crowded streets about Jasper Turrell’s brewery.

A large part of the town was a mere mass of pollution, sodden with sewage, and heaped up with refuse. There was no system. Everything had been done haphazard. Such drains as existed delivered themselves into the river. The town was pitted with closed and unventilated cesspools, and seamed with noisome ditches. The people were ignorant, degenerate, and abominably dirty.

With the exception of the better quarters, such as Mulberry Green and High Elms, the drinking water was obtained from surface wells and the river. So far, Wolfe had been unable to find a surface well that contained good water. They were polluted with sewage that leaked from the cesspools and with the washings by rain of the foul yards and courts. The river water was drunk by scores of families.

Most of the cottage property was in a state of dilapidation, and the alleys and lanes were damp and dirty. Nothing whatever appeared to have been done to evolve some system of scavenging. Many of the back gardens and yards were mere refuse heaps. Slops were thrown out into the lanes or on to the ground outside the back doors.

The general mortality in the town appeared to be very high. Consumption scoured the damp, low-lying quarters by the river. Many diseases that arose out of insanitary surroundings were endemic. The infant mortality was no worse than in other towns, nor had rheumatism crippled the people as much as Wolfe would have expected. It seemed certain that most of the common diseases of everyday life were both more prevalent and more disastrous in their effects. In the case of a “filth disease” getting a foothold in the town, its ravages were likely to be catastrophic.

The great exception that discovered itself to Wolfe’s researches was old Josiah Crabbe’s quarter of Peachy Hill. The fact that it stood on comparatively high ground did not explain its healthier record. There were three deep wells on Peachy Hill. The cottages had good gardens, and were in excellent repair. The sanitation was fairly sound; no refuse was allowed to accumulate, old Crabbe keeping two scavengers at work, and paying them out of his own pocket. His carts carried away all refuse. The useless stuff was pitched into a disused stone quarry a mile from the town; all material that could be used as manure was carted to old Crabbe’s farms. On Peachy Hill, Wolfe found that a shrewd and orderly brain had been at work, not for philanthropic ends, but because it loved order and cleanliness and sound profits. Rents were higher here. The pick of artisans and town workers lived in old Crabbe’s cottages on Peachy Hill. Yet the old man was hated. To judge by popular report he was one of those men who court hatred, who delight in it, who feel well fed when they are feared.

Wolfe had gone to work without ostentation, but in a town such as Navestock anything unusual attracted notice as sweetened beer attracts flies. One or two rent-collectors were the first to hear of the new doctor’s idiosyncrasies. The more ignorant people wondered what he was after, and in some of the beer-houses Wolfe’s “inquisitiveness” became a joke. But Navestock was full of people to whom inquisitiveness was an abominable indiscretion. Some of the landlords were not blind fools, and here was an officious young man pushing his nose into matters that did not concern him. Perhaps Wolfe foresaw the storm that might burst about him; perhaps he was not sufficiently cynical for so much foresight. He was minded to get to the bed-rock of things, and it may not have occurred to him that he would be spat upon for having the impertinence to remind other people of their responsibilities.

At the back of Mr. Jasper Turrell’s brewery was a place called Virgin’s Court, a collection of rickety cottages built round a stone-paved yard. In one corner stood the pump that was used by the dwellers in and about Virgin’s Court, a pump that had seen better days, to judge by its stone pillar and its elaborate iron snout and handle.

As St. Jude’s clock was striking eleven a clerk ran up to Mr. Jasper Turrell’s private room in the brewery and gave that gentleman a rather ambiguous message.

“Dunnet says you’ll find him in Virgin’s Court, sir.”

Jasper Turrell appeared to understand what Dunnet meant, and who the “him” was referred to in the message. He put on his hat, crossed the brewery yard, passed along Malt Lane, and turned into the narrow entry that led to Virgin’s Court. Mr. Turrell paused in the entry, and stood watching John Wolfe, who was walking to and fro across the court, sounding the stones with an oak stick. Wolfe was very leisurely and very methodical, and Jasper Turrell stood and stared at him with the air of a god who has caught some insolent mortal tampering with the secrets of Nature. The brewer’s eyes gleamed with satisfaction. “I’ve just caught the fellow!” said the lines about his mouth. He watched Wolfe leave his stone-tapping and cross the yard towards the pump.

Jasper Turrell had the reputation of being the worst-tempered man in Navestock. He was a notorious bully, and had bred his son Hector to be a bully, only old Turrell used his mouth, and young Turrell his fists. He did not trouble to approach Wolfe, but followed his usual habit of bellowing, even as he bellowed at his work-people and servants.

“Hallo, you there!”

Wolfe saw a big man in a black coat and white waistcoat filling the narrow entry to Virgin’s Court, his top hat cocked at an angle, his long, sandy whiskers sweeping the lapels of his coat. Turrell was an ugly man, repulsively ugly to those who happened to hate him. His very sandiness was insolent, and his grey-green eyes could glare like the eyes of a cat.

Wolfe stared at Mr. Turrell a moment, and then went on with the work he had in hand. He had taken a bottle from his pocket and was holding it under the snout of the pump, while he dribbled water into it by working the handle gently.

Turrell bawled again.

“Hallo, you there! Come over here, will you?”

Wolfe ignored the summons, but a number of Navestock heads appeared at the doors and windows. Turrell went very white when he was angry. He had a trick, too, of masticating his words, as though tasting their offensiveness before he hurled them at an enemy’s head.

“Hi, you there!”

Wolfe turned an imperturbable face.

“I beg your pardon——”

Turrell flung across with jerky, violent strides. He was very well aware of the grinning faces at the windows.

“Here, what do you mean by ignoring me, eh?”

Nothing could have been franker.

“I never answer, sir, when I am shouted at.”

“Oh, you don’t, don’t you! Nice manners for an understrapper! Now, what I want to know is, what you think you are doing here on my property?”

“Doctoring, sir.”

“You don’t physic the pump, do you? Look here, young man, you keep to matters that concern you.”

Wolfe corked the bottle with pleasant deliberation.

“They do concern me, Mr. Turrell.”

“They concern your confounded impertinence. No bluster, if you please. We don’t take our orders from young carpet-baggers who come into the town with a toothbrush and a pair of slippers. I’m not here to argue, sir, only to instruct you to mind your pill-and-ointment business. The water in that bottle is my property. Hand it over.”

“The bottle, sir, belongs to me.”

“Look here, young man, has old Threadgold put you up to this?”

“Dr. Threadgold has done nothing of the kind.”

“No, curse him, he’s too much sense. Very good. He is the responsible person in this town, not any officious young bonesetter who gets two pounds a week. We kick such folk out, sir—if they put on airs. See? Hand me over that bottle.”

Wolfe uncorked it, and turned it upside down. The water went “gollop, gollop,” and splashed the stones at Mr. Turrell’s feet.

“There is your property, sir.”

He looked Turrell in the eyes, recorked the bottle, and put it in his pocket.

“I am glad we understand each other, Mr. Turrell. Even an understrapper has responsibilities. Good morning.”

“Confound your insolence. Do you think——”

He found himself addressing John Wolfe’s back. Moreover, the heads at the doors and windows were all a-grin. The “gallery” might well smile over two grown men quarrelling about eight ounces of water in a blue-glass medicine bottle.