Joseph and Benjamin found themselves exceedingly happy and
exceedingly well occupied in their aunt's pleasant cottage. They
rose every morning with the lark, and spent an hour in setting
everything to rights in the house, and sweeping out every room with
scrupulous care, as their mother had taught them to do at home,
believing that perfect cleanliness was one of the greatest
safeguards against infection. Hot and close though the weather
remained, the air out in these open country places seemed delicious
to the boys, and the freedom to run out every moment into the open
fields was in itself a privilege which could only be appreciated by
those who had been long confined within walls.
Sometimes they were alone in the house with their aunt. Sometimes
the cottage harboured guests of various degrees--travellers fleeing
from the doomed city in terror of the fearful mortality there, or
poor unfortunates turned away from their own abodes because they
were suspected of having been in contact with the sick, and were
refused admittance again. Servant maids were often put in this
melancholy plight. They would be sent upon errands by their
employers to the bake house or some other place; and perhaps ere
they were admitted again they would be closely questioned as to
what they had seen or heard. Sometimes having terrible and doleful
tales to tell of having seen persons fall down in the agonies of
death almost at their feet, terror would seize hold upon the
inmates of the house, who would refuse to open the door to one who
might by this time be herself infected. And when this was the case,
the forlorn creature was forced to wander away, and generally tried
to find her way out of the city and into the country beyond. Many
such unlucky wights, having no passes, were turned back by the
guardians of the road; but some succeeded in evading these men, or
else in persuading them, and many such unfortunates had found rest
and help and shelter beneath Mary Harmer's charitable roof.
September was now come, but as yet there was no abatement of the
pestilence raging in the city. Indeed the accounts coming in of the
virulence of the plague seemed worse than ever. Ten thousand deaths
were returned in the weekly bill for the first week alone, and
those who knew the state of the city were of opinion that not more
than two-thirds of the deaths were ever really reported to the
authorities. Hitherto the carts had never gone about save by night,
and for all that was rumoured by those who loved to make the worst
of so terrible a calamity, it was seldom that a corpse lay about in
the streets for above a short while, just until notice of its
presence there was given to the authorities.
But now it seemed as though nothing could cope with the fearful
increase of the mortality. The carts were forced to work by day as
well as by night; and so virulent was now the pestilence that the
bearers and buriers who had hitherto escaped, or had recovered of
the malady and thought themselves safe, died in great numbers. So
that there were tales of carts overthrown in the streets by reason
of the drivers of them falling dead upon their load, or of
driverless horses going of their own accord to the pits with their
load.
These terrible tales were reported to Mary Harmer and her nephews
by the fugitives who sought refuge with her at this time. And very
thankful did the lads feel to be free of the city and its terrors,
albeit they never forgot to offer up earnest prayer for their
father and mother and all their dear ones who were dwelling in the
midst of so much peril. There was no hope of hearing news of them,
save by hazard, whilst things were like this; but they trusted that
the precautions taken, and hitherto successfully, would avert the
pestilence from their dwelling, and for the rest the boys were too
well employed to have time for brooding.
When their daily work at home was done, there were always errands
of mercy to be performed to neighbours who had had sickness at
home, or to the persons encamped in the fields, who were very
thankful of any little presents of vegetables or eggs or other
necessaries; whilst others of larger means were glad to buy from
those who came to sell, and gave good money for the accommodation.
Mary Harmer had a large and productive garden and a large stock of
poultry, so that she was able both to sell and to give largely; and
the boys thought that working in the garden and looking after the
fowls was the best sort of fun possible. They were exceedingly
useful to her, and she kept them out of danger without fretting or
curbing their eager spirit of usefulness. Of course, no person in
those days could act with unselfish charity and not adventure
something; but she took all reasonable precautions, and, like her
brother, trusted the rest to Providence. And she believed that the
boys were safer with her, even though not so closely restrained,
than they would have been had they remained in the infected city,
where the people now seemed to be dying like stricken sheep.
But the spirit of curiosity and love of adventure were not dead
within the hearts of the boys; and although for some weeks they
were fully contented in performing the duties set them by their
aunt, there were moments when a strong curiosity would come over
them for some greater sensation, and this it was which led them to
an act of disobedience destined to be fraught with important
consequences, as will soon be seen.
Mary Harmer's house was empty again, and she had promised to sit up
for a night with a sick woman who lived some two miles off, and who
had entreated her to come and see her. This was no case of plague,
but fear of the infection had become so strong by this time that
the sick were often rather harshly treated, and sometimes almost
entirely neglected, by those about them. Mary Harmer had heard that
this poor creature had been left alone by her son's wife, who had
taken away her children and refused to go near her. Mary knew that
her presence there for a while, and her assurances as to the nature
of the malady, would be most likely to bring the woman to reason,
so she decided to go and remain for one whole night, and she left
her own cottage in the charge of the boys, bidding them take care
of everything, and expect her back again on the following
afternoon.
They were quite happy all that evening, seeing to the poultry, and
running races with Fido in the leafy lane. They liked the
importance of the charge of the house, although they missed the
gentle presence of their aunt. They shut up the house at dark, and
prepared their simple supper, and whilst they were eating it,
Benjamin said:
"What shall we do tomorrow when we have finished our work?"
"I know what I should like to do," said Joseph promptly.
"What, brother?" asked Benjamin eagerly.
"Marry, what I want to do is to go and see that farm house hard by
Clerkenwell which they have turned into a pest house, and where
they say they have dozens of plague-stricken people brought in
daily. I have never seen a pest house. I would fain know what it
looks like. And we might get more news there of the truth of those
things that they say about the plague in the city. Ben, what sayest
thou?"
Ben's eyes were round with wonder and excitement. The boys had all
the careless daring and eager curiosity which belong to boy nature.
They were by this time so much habituated to living under
conditions of risk and a certain amount of peril, that a little
more or a little less did not now seem greatly to matter.
"Would our good aunt approve?" asked the younger boy.
"I trow not," answered Joseph frankly; "women are always timid, and
she would say, perchance, that unless duty called us it were
foolish to adventure ourselves into danger. But I would fain see
this place, Ben, boy. If in time to come we live to be men, and
folks ask us of these days of peril and sickness, I should like to
have seen all that may be seen of these great things. Our father
went many times to the pest houses within the city and came away no
worse. Why should thou or I suffer? We have our vinegar bottles and
our decoctions, and methinks we know enough now not to run needless
risks."
Benjamin was almost as eager and curious as his brother. The spirit
of adventure soon gets into the hearts of boys and runs riot there.
Before they went to bed they had fully decided to make the
excursion; and they rose earlier next morning so as to get all
their work done while it was yet scarce light, so that they might
start for their destination before the heat of the day came on.
It was pleasant walking through the dewy fields, and hard indeed
was it to imagine that death and misery lurked anywhere in the
neighbourhood of what was so smiling and gay. The boys knew what
paths to take, nor was the distance very great. Benjamin on his
former visit to his aunt had spent a day with the good people at
this very farm house. Now, alas, all had been swept away, and the
place had been taken possession of for the time being by the
authorities, to be used as a supplementary pest house, where the
homeless sick could be temporarily housed. Generally it was but for
a few hours or a couple of days that such shelter was needed. The
great common grave, barely a quarter of a mile away, received day
by day the great majority of the unfortunate ones who were brought
in.
In all London proper there were only two pest houses used at this
time, one on some fields beyond Old Street, and the other in
Westminster; but as the virulence of the distemper increased, and
the suburbs became so terribly infected, and such numbers of
persons fleeing this way and that would fall stricken by the
wayside, it became necessary to find places of some sort where they
could be received, and the authorities began to take possession of
empty houses--generally farmsteads standing in a convenient but
isolated position--and to use them for this melancholy purpose. It
could not be expected that even the most charitable would receive
plague-stricken wayfarers into their own families, nor would such a
thing be right. Yet they could not remain by the wayside to die and
infect the air. So they were removed by the bearers appointed to
that gruesome work to these smaller pest houses, and only too often
from thence to the pit in the course of a few hours.
"How pretty it all looks!" said Benjamin, as they approached the
place. "See, Joseph, those are the great elm trees where the rooks
build, and which I used to climb. When they cut the hay, I came
often and rolled about in it and played with the boys from the
farm. To think that they should all be dead and gone! Alack! what
strange times these be! It seems sometimes as though it were all a
dream!"
"I would it were!" said Joseph, sobered by the thought of their
near approach to the habitation of death. "Ben, wouldst thou rather
turn back and see no more? We have at least seen the outside of a
pest house. Shall that suffice us?"
"Nay, if we have come so far, let us go further," answered
Benjamin. "We have seen naught but the tiled roof and the green
garden. Come this way. There is a little gate by which we may gain
entrance to a side door. Perchance they will turn us back if we
seek to enter at the front."
The farm house looked peaceful enough nestling beneath its
sheltering row of tall elms, in the midst of its wild garden, now a
mass of autumnal bloom. But as they neared the house the boys heard
dismal sounds issuing thence--the groans of sufferers beneath the
hands of the physicians, who were often driven to use what seemed
cruel measures to cause the tumours to break--the only chance of
recovery for the patient--the shriek of some maddened or delirious
patient, or the unintelligible murmur and babble from a multitude
of sick. Moreover, they inhaled the pungent fumes of the burning
drugs and vinegar which alone made it possible to breathe the
atmosphere tainted by so much pestilential sickness. The boys held
their own bottles of vinegar to their noses as they stole towards
the house, feeling a mingling of strong repulsion and strong
curiosity as they approached the dismal stronghold of disease.
Although men were in these days becoming almost reckless, and those
who actually nursed and tended the sick were naturally less
cautious and less particular than others, yet it is probable that
the daring boys might have been turned back had they approached the
house by the ordinary entrance, for they certainly could not
profess to have business there. As it was, however, thanks to
Benjamin's knowledge of the place, not a creature observed their
quiet approach through the orchard and along a tangled garden path.
This path brought them to a door, which stood wide open in this
sultry weather, in order to let a free current of air pass through
the house, and they inhaled more strongly still the aromatic
perfumes, which were not yet strong enough entirely to overcome
that other noisome odour which was one of the most fatal means of
spreading infection from plague-stricken patients.
"We can get into the great kitchen by this door," whispered
Benjamin. "I trow they will use it for the sick; it is the biggest
room in all the house. Yonder is the door. Shall I open it?"
Joseph gave a sign of assent, but bid his brother not speak
needlessly, and keep his handkerchief to his mouth and nose. They
had both steeped their handkerchiefs in vinegar, and could inhale
nothing save that pungent scent.
Burning with curiosity, yet half afraid of their own temerity, the
boys stole through a half-open door into a great room lined with
beds. The sound of moans, groans, shrieks, and prayers drowned all
the noise their own entry might have made, and they stood in the
shadow looking round them, quite unnoticed in the general confusion
of that busy home of death.
There were perhaps a score or more of sufferers in the great room,
and two nurses moving about amongst them, quickly and in none too
tender a fashion. A doctor was also there with a young man, his
assistant; and at some bedsides he paused, whilst at others he gave
a shake of the head, and went by without a word. Indeed it seemed
to the boys as though almost a quarter of the patients were dead
men, they lay so still and rigid, and the purple patches upon the
white skin stood out with such terrible distinctness.
A man suddenly put in his head from the open door at the other end
and asked of anybody who could answer him:
"Room for any more here?"
And the doctor's assistant, looking round, replied:
"Room for four, if you will send and have these taken away."
Almost immediately there came in two men, who bore away four
corpses from the place, and in five minutes more the beds were full
again, and the nurses were calculating how soon it would be
possible to receive more, some now here being obviously in a dying
state. The bearers reported that the outer barn was full as well as
all the house; but those without invariably died, whilst a portion
of those brought in recovered.
Joseph and Benjamin had seen enough for their own curiosity. It was
a more terrible sight than they had anticipated, and they felt a
great longing to get out of this stricken den into the purer air
without. Joseph had laid a hand on his brother's arm to draw him
away, when he was alarmed by seeing his brother's eyes fixed upon
the far corner of the room with such an extraordinary expression of
amaze and horror, that for a moment he feared he must have been
suddenly stricken by the plague and was going off into the awful
delirium he had heard described.
A poignant fear and remorse seized him, lest he had been the means
of bringing his brother into this peril and having caused his
attack, if indeed it were one, and he pulled him harder by the arm
to get him away. But with a strange choked cry Benjamin broke from
him, and running across the room he flung himself upon his knees by
the side of a bed, crying in a lamentable voice:
"Reuben--Reuben--Reuben!"
It was Joseph's turn now to gaze in horror and dismay. Could that
be Reuben--that cadaverous, death-like creature, with the livid
look of a plague patient, lying like one in a trance which can only
end in the awakening of death? Was Benjamin dreaming? or was it
really their brother? But how could he by any possibility be here,
so far away from home, so utterly beyond the limits of his own
district?
The doctor had approached Benjamin and had pulled him back from the
bedside quickly, though not unkindly.
"What are you doing here, child?" he said. "Have we not enough upon
our hands without having sound persons mad enough to seek to add to
the numbers of the sick? Is he a relation of yours?
"Well, well, well, he will be looked after here better than you can
do it. Your brother? Well, he has been four days here, and is one
of those I have hope for. The tumours have discharged. He is
suffering now from weakness and fever; but he might get well,
especially if we could move him out of this pestilential air. Go
home, children, and tell your friends that if they have a place to
take him to he will not infect them now, and will have a better
chance. But you must not linger here. It may be death to you;
though it is true enough that many come seeking their friends who
go away and take no hurt. No one can say who is safe and who is
not. But get you gone, get you gone. Your brother shall be well
looked to, I say. We have none so many who recover that we can
afford to let those slip back for whom there is a chance!"
He had pushed the boys by this time into the garden, and was
speaking to them there. He was a kind man, if blunt, and habit had
not bred indifference in him to the sufferings of those about him.
He told the boys that one of the strangest features about the
plague patients was the rapid recovery they often made when once
the poison was discharged by the breaking of the swellings, and the
rapidity with which the infection ceased when these broken tumours
had healed. Reuben's case had seemed desperate enough when he was
brought in, but now he was in a fair way of recovery. If he could
be taken to better air, he would probably be a sound man quickly.
Even as he was, he might well recover.
The boys looked at each other and said with one voice that they
thought they knew of a house where he would be received, and got
leave to remove him in a cart at any time. The doctor then hurried
back to his work, whilst the brothers looked each other in the
face, and Benjamin said gravely:
"Methinks it must have been put into our hearts to go. Aunt Mary
will forgive the temerity when she hears of the special
Providence."
Their aunt was at no great distance off, as Benjamin knew. Instead
of going home, they found their way to a brook. Pulling off their
clothes, they proceeded to drag them over the sweet-scented meadow
grass. Then they plunged into the brook, and enjoyed a delightful
paddle and bath in the clear cool water. After rolling themselves
in the hot grass, and having a fine romp there with Fido, they
donned their garments, and felt indeed as though they had got rid
of all germs of infection and disease.
After this they made their way towards the cottage where their aunt
had been staying, and met her just sallying forth to return home.
Without any hesitation or delay Joseph told the tale of their
hardihood and disobedience, and the strange discovery to which it
had led them; and although their aunt trembled and looked pale with
terror at the thought of how they had exposed themselves, she did
not stop to chide them, but was full of anxiety for the immediate
release of Reuben from his pestilential prison, and eager to have
him to nurse in her own house, if she could do this without risk to
the younger boys.
They were to the full as eager as she, and promised in everything
to obey her--even to the sleeping and living in an outhouse for a
few days, if only she would save Reuben from that horrible pest
house. None knew better than Mary Harmer, who was a notable nurse
herself, how much might now depend upon pure air, nourishing food,
and quiet; and how could her nephew receive much individual care
when cooped up amongst scores, if not hundreds, of desperate cases?
Mary was so much beloved by all around, that she quickly found a
farmer willing to lend a cart even for the purpose of removing a
sick person from the pest house, if he bore the honoured name of
Harmer. She would not permit any person to accompany the cart, but
drove it herself, and sent the boys home to prepare the airiest
chamber and make all such preparations as they could think of
beforehand; and to remove their own bedding into the outhouse, till
she was assured that they were in no peril from the presence of
their brother indoors.
Eagerly the boys worked at these tasks, and everything was in
beautiful order when the cart drove up. One of the attendants from
the pest house had come with it, and he carried Reuben up to the
bed made ready for him, and drove the cart away, promising to
disinfect it thoroughly, and return it to the owner ere nightfall.
It was little the eager boys saw of their aunt that day. She was
engrossed by Reuben the whole time. She said he was terribly weak,
and that he had not yet got back the use of his faculties. He lay
in a sort of trance or stupor, and did not know where he was or
what was happening. It came from weakness, and would pass away as
he got back his strength. The doctor had assured her that the
plague symptoms had spent themselves, and that he was free from the
contagion.
The boys slept in the shed that night tranquilly enough, and in the
morning their aunt came to them with a grave and sorrowful face.
"Is he worse?" asked Benjamin starting up.
"Not worse, I hope, yet not better. He has some trouble on his
mind, and I fear that if we cannot ease him of that he will die,"
and her tears ran over, for Reuben was dear to her as a nephew, and
she knew what store her brother set by his eldest son.
"Trouble! what trouble? Are any dead at home?" cried the boys
anxiously. "Can he speak? has he talked to you? Tell us all!"
"He has not talked with his senses awake, but he has spoken words
which have told me much. Death is not the trouble. He has not said
one word to make me fear that our loved ones have been taken. The
trouble is his own. It is a trouble of the heart. It concerns one
whose name is Gertrude. Is not that the name of Master Mason's
daughter?"
"Why, yes, to be sure. She has joined with the rest--with Janet and
Rebecca--to care for the orphan children whom none know what to do
with, there are such numbers of them. Reuben always thought a great
deal of Mistress Gertrude--and she of him. What of that?"
"Does she think much of him?" asked Mary eagerly. "I feared she had
flouted his love!"
"Nay, she worships the ground he treads on!" cried Joseph, who had
a very sharp pair of eyes of his own, and a great liking for
sweet-spoken Gertrude himself. "It was madam, her mother, who
flouted Reuben. Gertrude is of different stuff. Why, whenever she
was with us she would get me in a corner and talk of nothing but
him. I thought they would but wait for the plague to be overpast to
wed each other!"
Mary stood with her hands locked together, thinking deeply.
"Joseph," she said, "if it were a matter of saving Reuben's life,
think you that Mistress Gertrude would come hither to my house and
help me to nurse him back to health?"
Joseph's eyes flashed with eager excitement.
"I am certain sure she would!" he answered.
"Ah, but how to let her know!" cried Mary, pressing her hands
together in perplexity. "Alas for days like these! How shall any
one get a letter safely delivered to her in time? It may be that if
we tarry the fever will have swept him off. It is fever of the mind
rather than the body, and it is hard to minister to the mind
diseased, without the one healing medicine."
"Hold! I have a plan," cried Joseph, whose wits were sharpened by
the pressing nature of the business in hand; "listen, and I will
expound it. Tomorrow morning I will sally forth with a barrow laden
with eggs, vegetables, and fruit; and I will enter the city as one
of the country folks for the market, with whom none interfere at
the barriers. I will e'en sell my goods to whoever will buy them,
and at the bottom of the barrow thou shalt put one of thy cotton
gowns and market aprons, Aunt Mary. Then will I go to Mistress
Gertrude and tell her all. I shall learn of the welfare of those at
home, and will come back with her at my side. The watch will but
take her for a market woman, and we shall both pass unchecked and
unhindered. By noon tomorrow Gertrude shall be here!
"Nay, hinder me not, good aunt. We must all adventure ourselves
somewhat in this dire distress and peril. Sure, if Providence kept
me safe in yon pest house yesterday, I need not fear to return to
the city upon an errand of mercy such as may save my brother's
life!"