"Ben, boy, I am sick to death of sitting at home doing naught, and
seeing naught of all the sights that be abroad, and of which men
are for ever speaking. What boots it to be alive, if one is buried
or shut up as we are? Art thou afraid to come forth? or shall I go
alone?"
"Where wilt thou go, brother?" asked Ben, looking up from a bit of
wood carving upon which he was engrossed, with an eager light in
his eyes. Perhaps these two young lads had felt the calamity which
had befallen the city more than any one else in the house; for
whilst the father, mother, sisters, and two elder sons were all
hard at work doing all in their power for the relief of the sick,
the younger lads were kept at home, to be as far as possible out of
harm's way, and they had felt the confinement and idleness as most
irksome. Their mother employed them about the house when she could,
but it was not much she could find for them to do. To be sure there
was some amusement to be found in watching the life on the river;
for though traffic was suspended, many whole families were living
on board vessels moored on the river, and hoped by this device to
keep the plague away from them. Yet the time hung very heavy on
their hands, and the stories of the increasing ravages of the
plague could not but depress them, seeming as they did to lengthen
out indefinitely the time of their captivity.
Three of the sisters were practically living away from the house
(of which more anon), and the loneliness of the silent house was
becoming unbearable. To lads used to an active life and plenty of
exercise, the distemper itself seemed a less evil than this close
confinement between four walls. The bridge houses did not even
possess yards or strips of garden, and without venturing out into
the streets--which had for some weeks been forbidden by their
father--the boys could not stir beyond the walls of their home.
August had now come, a close, steaming, sultry August, and the
plague was raging with a virulence that threatened to destroy the
whole city. The Bills of Mortality week by week were appalling in
magnitude; and yet those who knew best the condition of the lower
courts and alleys were well aware that no possible record could be
kept of those crowded localities, where whole households and
families, even whole streets, were swept away in the course of a
few days, and where there were sometimes none left to give warning
and notice that there were dead to be borne away. So the registered
deaths could only show a certain proportionate accuracy; for even
the dead carts could keep no reckoning of the numbers they bore to
the common grave, and the bearers themselves were too often
stricken down in the performance of their ghastly duties, and shot
by their comrades into the pit amongst those whom they had carried
forth an hour before.
It was small wonder that the father had forbidden his younger sons
to adventure themselves in the streets, where the pestilence seemed
to hang in the very air. But the magnitude of the peril was
beginning to rob even the most cautious persons of any confidence
in their methods, for it seemed as if those working hardest amongst
the sick and dead were quite as much preserved from peril as those
who shunned their neighbours and never came abroad unless dire
necessity compelled them. Indeed, despite many deaths of
individuals, it began to be noted that the magistrates, aldermen,
examiners of health, and nurses of the plague-stricken sickened and
died less, in proportion, than almost any other class. And of the
physicians who remained at their posts to tend the sick, not many
died, although some few here and there were stricken, and of these
a certain proportion succumbed. But, as a whole, the workers who
toiled with a good heart and gentle spirit amongst the sick (not
just for daily bread or love of gain) fared better in the
prevailing mortality than many others who held themselves aloof and
lived in deadly fear of the pestilence. Wherefore it was not
strange that at the last a sort of recklessness was bred amongst
the citizens, and they kept themselves less close now when things
were in so terrible a pass than they had done when the deaths were
fewer and the conditions less fatal.
James Harmer had always been one of those who had put his
confidence more in the providence of God than in any merely human
precautions, and although he had always insisted upon prudence and
care, he had steadily discouraged in his household any of that
feeling of panic or of despair which he believed had been a strong
factor in the spread of the distemper in its earlier stages. He
also agreed in part with Lady Scrope's views regarding the water
supply of the city--the old wells and the contaminated river water.
He let nothing be drunk in his house save what was supplied from
the New River, and he impressed the same advice upon all his
neighbours.
But to return to the boys and their weariness of the shut-up life
of the house. The heat had grown intolerable, their pining after
fresh air and liberty was become too strong for resistance.
Benjamin's eyes glowed at the very thought of escape from the
region of streets and shut-up houses, and he drank in the sense of
his brother's words eagerly.
"Hark ye," cried Joseph, in a rapid undertone, for they did not
wish their mother to overhear them, she being by many degrees more
fearful than their father, as was but natural, "why should we stay
pent up here day after day and week after week, when even the girls
be permitted abroad, and go into the very heart of the peril? We
cannot be nurses to the sick, I know right well; neither can we
help to search houses, or do such like things, as the elder ones.
But why do we tarry at home eating our hearts out, when the whole
world is before us, and there be such wondrous things to see?
"Listen, Ben. I have a plan. Let us but once get free of this
house, and be our own masters, and we will wander about London as
we will, and see those things of which all men be speaking. I long
to look into one of those yawning pits where they shoot the dead,
and to see the grass growing in the city, and to hear some of those
strange preachers who go about prophesying in the streets. I long
for liberty and freedom. I would sooner die of the plague at last
than fret my heart out shut up here. And we may be smitten as well
at home as abroad, as even father says himself."
"Why, so we may; and methinks more are smitten so than those who go
forth and breathe the air without!" cried Benjamin. "Our aunt lives
amongst the dying, but she is not smitten; and the girls are ever
in peril, but they live on, whilst others are taken. But will our
father let us go forth? For I would not like to go unless he bid
us."
"Nay, nor I," answered Joseph quickly, for reverence for their
father was a strong sentiment in all James Harmer's sons and
daughters; "we will strive to win his consent and blessing to our
going forth; but we need not say all that we purpose doing when we
are free. For, indeed, it may well be that we shall meet with many
hindrances. They say that the roads leading away from the city are
all closely watched, that no infected person is able to pass, and
that many sound ones are turned back lest they bring the infection
with them."
"Then how shall we get out?" asked Benjamin; but Joseph nodded his
head wisely, and said he had a plan.
Before, however, he could further enlighten his brother they heard
their father's footfall on the stair, and he came in looking weary
and sad, as it was inevitable that he should, coming as he did into
personal contact with so much misery, sickness, and death.
There was always refreshment ready for the workers at any hour of
the day when they should come in to seek it. The boys rushed off to
get him such things as their mother had ready, and whilst he
partook of the wholesome and appetising meal prepared for him,
Joseph burst out with his pent-up weariness of the shut-up life,
his longing to be free of the house and the city, and his earnest
desire that his father would permit him and Benjamin to go forth
and shift for themselves in the country until the terrible
visitation was past.
The father listened with a grave face. He too began to have a great
fear that the whole city was doomed to be swept away, and although
upheld in his resolve to do his duty, so long as he was able, by
his strong and fervent faith in the goodness and mercy of God, he
was disposed to the opinion that all who remained would in turn be
carried off victims to the fearful pestilence. Had he known from
the beginning how terrible it would become in time, he sometimes
said to himself, he would at least have made shift to send his
family away; but now that they were engrossed in works of piety and
charity, he could not feel it right to bid them cease their labours
of love, nor did he feel any temptation to quit his own post. Yet
this made him the more ready to listen to the eager petition of his
boys, and to consider the project which had formed itself in the
quick brain of Joseph.
"Father, I have thought of it so much these past days. We are sound
in health. Thou couldst get us the papers without which men say
none can pass the watch upon the roads. With them we can sally
forth, with a small provision of money and food, and make our way
either by boat to the farm at Greenwich where the other 'prentice
boys live, and where there would be a welcome for us always, or
else northward to our aunt beyond Islington, who will be hungering
for news of us, and who will be rejoiced, I am very sure, to give
us a welcome and to hear of the welfare of all, even though we come
to her from the land of the shadow of death."
"Ay, verily do ye!" exclaimed the father, whose phrase Joseph had
picked up and quoted. "Heaven send that my poor sister be yet
numbered among the living. I know not whether the fell disease has
wrought havoc beyond the limits of the city in that direction; but
at the first it raged more fiercely north and west than with us,
and God alone knows who are taken and who are left!"
"Then, father, may we go?" asked Benjamin, eagerly.
The father looked from one boy to the other with the glance of one
who thinks he may be looking his last upon some loved face. Men had
begun to grow used to the thought that when they left their homes
in the morning they might return to them no more, or that they
might return to find that one or more of their dear ones had been
struck down and carried off in the course of a few hours. So
terrible was the malignity of the disease, that often death
supervened after a few hours, although others would linger--often
in terrible suffering--for many days before death (or much more
rarely, recovery) relieved them of their pain. This good man knew
that if he let the lads go, he might never see them again. He or
they might be victims before they met, and might see each other's
face no more upon earth.
Yet he did not oppose the boys' plan. He knew how bad for them was
this shut-up life, and how the very sense of fret and compulsory
inactivity might predispose them to the contagion. If they could
once get beyond the limits of the city, they might be far safer
than they could be here. It would be a relief to have them gone--to
think of them as living in safety in the fresh air of the country.
Moreover, it pleased him to think of sending a message of loving
assurance to his favourite sister, who dwelt in the open country
beyond the hamlet of Islington. He felt assured that if she still
lived she would have a warm welcome for his boys; and if the lads
were well provided with money and wholesome food, they had wits
enough to take care of themselves for a while, until they had found
some asylum. In all the surrounding villages, as he well knew, were
only too many empty houses and cottages. He knew that there was
risk; but there was risk everywhere, and he felt sympathy with the
lads for their eager desire to get free of their prison.
The mother felt more fear, but she never interfered with the
decisions of her husband. Her tears fell as she packed up in very
small compass a few articles of clothing and some provisions for
the lads. Their father furnished them with money, the bulk of which
was sewn up in their clothing, and with those health passes which
were so needful for those leaving the infected city.
The summer's night was really the best time in which to commence a
journey. The heat of the streets by day was intolerable, the danger
of encountering infected persons was greater, whilst although it
was at night that the dead carts went about, these could be easily
avoided, as the warning bell and mournful cry gave ample notice of
their approach.
Last thing of all, after the boys had partaken of an ample supper,
and had shed a few natural tears at the thought that it might be
the last meal ever eaten beneath the roof of the old home, the
father knelt down and commended them solemnly to the care of Him in
whose hands alone lay the issues of life and death. Then he blessed
the boys individually, charged them to take every reasonable care,
and finally escorted them down to the door, which he carefully
opened, and after ascertaining that the road was quite clear, he
walked with them as far as the end of the bridge, and dismissed
them on their way with another blessing.
Much sobered by the scenes through which they had passed, yet not a
little elated by the quick and successful issue to their demand,
the boys looked each other in the face by the light of the great
yellow moon, and nipped each other by the hand to make sure it was
not all a dream.
How strange the sleeping city looked beneath that pale white light!
The boys had hardly ever been abroad after nightfall, and never
during this sad strange time, when even by day all was so different
from what they had been used to see. Now it did indeed look like a
city of the dead, for not even an idle roisterer, or a drunkard
stumbling homewards with uncertain gait, was to be seen. The
watchmen, sleeping or trying to sleep within the porches or upon
the doorsteps of certain houses, were the only living beings to be
seen; and even they were few and far between in this locality, for
almost every house was shut up and empty, the inhabitants of many
having fled before the distemper became so bad, and others having
all died off, leaving the houses utterly vacant.
"Let us go and see the house where Janet and Rebecca and Mistress
Gertrude dwell," said Benjamin, as they watched their father's
figure vanish in the distance, and felt themselves quite alone in
the world; "perchance one of them may be waking, and may look forth
from the window if we throw up a pebble. I would fain say a
farewell word to them ere we go forth, for who knows whether we may
see them again?"
"Ay, verily, we may be dead or else they," said Joseph, but in the
tone of one who has grown used to the thought. "This way then; the
house lies hard by, next door to my Lady Scrope's. Who would have
thought that that cross old madwoman would have turned so kindly
disposed towards the poor and sick as she hath done?"
There were many amongst her former friends and acquaintances who
would have asked that question, had they been there to ask it. Lady
Scrope had never been credited with charitable feelings; and yet it
was her doing that a large house, her own property, next door to
the small one she chose to inhabit, had been made over to the
magistrates and authorities of the city at this time, for the
housing of orphaned children whose parents had perished of the
plague, and who were thrown upon the charity of strangers, or upon
those entrusted with the care of the city at this crisis.
True, the house was standing empty and desolate. Its tenants had
fled, taking their goods with them. All that was left of plenishing
belonged to Lady Scrope. Pallets were easily provided by the
officers of health, and the place was speedily filled with little
children, who were tenderly cared for by Gertrude, Janet, and
Rebecca (who had joined her sister in this labour of love), all
three having given themselves up to this work, and finding their
hands too full to desire other occupation abroad.
Joseph and Benjamin had of course heard all about this, and knew
exactly where to find the house. It was marked with the red cross,
for, as was inevitable, many of the little inmates were carried off
by the fell disease after admission, and the numbers were
constantly thinning and being replaced by fresh ones. But hitherto
the nurses themselves had been spared, and toiled on unremittingly
at their self-chosen work.
There was no watchman at the door as the boys stole up, but they
had scarcely been there ten seconds before a window was thrown up,
and Janet's voice was heard exclaiming, "Andrew, art thou yet
returned?"
"There is nobody here, sister," answered Joseph, "save Ben and me.
We are come to say farewell, for we are going forth this night from
the city, to seek safety with our aunt in Islington. Can we do
aught for you ere we go?"
"Alas, it is the dead cart of which we have need tonight," answered
Janet. "We sent the watchman for physic, but it is needed no
longer. The little ones are dead already--three of them, and only
one ill this morning.
"Ah, brothers, glad am I to hear ye be going. God send you safety
and health; and forget not to pray for us in the city when ye are
far away. May He soon see fit to remove His chastening hand! It is
hard to see the little ones suffer."
Janet's voice was quiet and calm, but Benjamin burst into tears at
the sound of her words, and at the thought of the little dead
children; but she leaned out and said kindly:
"Nay, nay, weep not, Ben, boy; let us think that they are taken in
mercy from the evil to come. But linger not here, dear brothers.
Who knows that contagion may not dwell in the very air? Go forth
with what speed you may.
"Ah, there is the bell! The cart is on its way! And here comes good
Andrew back. Now he will do all that we need. Fare you well,
brothers. Rebecca is sleeping tonight, and I would not wake her. I
will give her your farewell love tomorrow."
She waved them away, and they withdrew; but a species of
fascination kept them hanging round the spot. Moreover, they feared
to meet the death cart in that narrow thoroughfare, and the porch
of the church of Allhallowes the Less was in close proximity. The
iron gate was open, and they were quickly able to hide themselves
in the porch, from whence by peeping out they could see all that
passed.
Nearer and nearer came the sound of the rumbling wheels and the
bell, and now the cry, "Bring forth your dead! bring forth your
dead!" was clearly to be heard through the still air. Round the
corner came the strange conveyance, drawn by two weary-looking
horses; and at some signal from the inmates it drew up at the door
of the house in front of which the boys had been standing a minute
before.
The watchman brought out three little shrouded forms. They were
laid upon the top of the awful pile, and the cart with its heavy
load rumbled away, the bell no longer ringing, because there was no
room for more upon that journey.
The boys stood with hands closely locked together, for although
they had heard of these things before, they had never seen the
sight. Their bedroom at home looked out upon the river, and the
dead cart only went about at night. They trembled at the thought
which came to them, that had they been numbered amongst the dead
during this terrible visitation they too had been carried in that
fashion to their last resting place.
"Come, Ben, let us be going," said Joseph, recovering himself
first; "we need not linger in the city if we like it not. There may
be strange things to see in all truth; but if we have no stomach
for them, why let us make our way northward with all speed. We can
leave all this behind us by daybreak an we will."
Taking hands, and feeling their courage return as they walked on,
the brothers passed along the silent streets. Sometimes a window
would be opened from above, and a doleful voice would cry aloud in
grief or anguish of mind, or some command would be shouted to the
watchman beneath, or there would be a piercing cry for the dead
cart as it rumbled by. The boys at last grew used to the sound of
the bell and the wheels. Go where they would they could not avoid
hearing one or another as the men went about their dismal errand.
It seemed less terrible after a time than it had done at first, and
the bold spirit within them came back.
They wended their way northward, avoiding the narrower
thoroughfares and keeping to the broader streets. Even these were
often very narrow and ill smelling, so that the brothers had
recourse to their vinegar bottle or swallowed a spoonful of Venice
treacle before venturing down. Once they were forced to turn aside
out of their way to avoid a heap of corpses that had been brought
out from a narrow alley to wait for the cart. They had heard of
such things before, but to see them was tenfold more terrible. Yet
the spirit of adventure took possession of them as they passed
along, and they were less afraid even of the most terrible things
than they had been of lesser ones at starting.
In passing near to the little church of St. Margaret's, Lothbury,
they were attracted by the sound of a voice crying out as if in
excitement or fear. Being filled with curiosity in spite of their
fears, they turned in the direction of the sound, and came upon a
man clutching hard at the railings of the little churchyard, which
like all others in that part was now filled to overflowing, and
closed for burials, the dead being taken to the great pits dug in
various places. Night though it was, there was a small crowd of
persons gathered round the railings, all peering in with eager
faces, whilst the voice of the man at the corner kept calling out:
"See! see! there she goes! She stands there by yon tall tombstone
waving her arms over her head! Now she is wringing her hands, and
weeping again.
"O my wife, my wife! do you not know me? I am here, Margaret, I am
here! Weep not for the children who are dead; weep for unhappy me,
who am left alive. Ay, it is for the living that men should weep
and howl. The dead are at peace--their troubles are over; but our
agony is yet to come.
"Margaret! Margaret! look at me! pity me!
"Ah, she will not hear! She turns away! See, she is gliding hither
and thither seeking the graves of her children--
"Margaret! I could not help it. They would not let them lie beside
thee! They took them away in the cart. I would have sprung in after
them, but they held me back.
"Ah, woe is me! woe is me! There is no place for me either among
the living or the dead. All turn from me alike!"
The tears rolled down the poor man's face, his voice was choked
with sobs. He still continued to point and to cry out, and to
address some imaginary being whom he declared was wandering amongst
the tombs. The boys pressed near to look, for some in the crowd
suddenly made exclamations as though they had caught a glimpse of
the phantom; but look as they would the brothers saw nothing, and
Joseph asked of an elderly man in the little crowd what it all
meant.
"Methinks it means only that yon poor fellow has lost his reason,"
he answered, shaking his head. "His wife was one of the first to
die when the distemper broke out; and men called it only a fever,
though some said she had the tokens on her. She was buried here.
And it is but a week since the last of his children was taken--six
in two weeks; and he has escaped out of his house, and wanders
about the streets, and comes here every night, saying that he sees
his dead wife, and that she is looking for her children, and cannot
find them because they are lying in the plague pit. He is
distraught, poor fellow; but many men gather night by night to hear
him.
"For my part, I will come no more. Men are best at home in their
own houses; and you lads had best go home as fast as you can. It is
no place and no hour for boys to be abroad."
Joseph and Benjamin said a civil goodnight to the man, and taking
hands bent their steps northward once again. They were now close to
the open Moor Fields; and although there was still another region
of houses to be passed upon the other side, they felt that when
once they had passed the gate and the walls they should have left
the worst of the peril behind them.