Next morning after Rotha's struggle with Mrs. Garth at the bridge, the
rumor passed through Wythburn that the plague was in the district.
Since the advent of the new preachers the people had seen the dreaded
scourge dangling from the sleeve of every stranger who came from the
fearsome world without. They had watched for the fatal symptoms: they
had waited for them: they had invited them. Every breeze seemed to be
freighted with the plague wind; every harmless ailment seemed to be
the epidemic itself.
Not faith in the will of God, not belief in destiny, not fortitude or
fatalism, not unselfishness or devil-may-care indifference, had saved
the people from the haunting dread of being mown down by the unseen
and insidious foe.
And now in very truth the plague seemed to have reached their doors.
It was at the cottage by the smithy. Rumor said that Mrs. Garth had
brought it with her from Carlisle, but it was her son who was stricken
down.
The blacksmith had returned home soon after Rotha had left him. His
mother was there, and she talked to him of what she had heard of the
plague. This was in order to divert his attention from the subject
that she knew to be uppermost in his thoughts--the trial, and what had
come of it. She succeeded but too well.
Garth listened in silence, and then slunk off doggedly to the smithy.
“I'm scarce well enough for work to-day,” he said, coming back in half
an hour.
His mother drew the settle to the fire, and fixed the cushions that he
might lie and rest.
But no rest was to be his. He went back to the anvil and worked till
the perspiration dripped from his forehead. Then he returned to the
house.
“My mouth is parched to-day, somehow,” he said; “did you say a parched
mouth was a sign?”
“Shaf, lad! thou'rt hot wi' thy wark.”
Garth went back once more to the smithy, and, writhing under the
torture of suspense, he worked until the very clothes he wore were
moist to the surface. Then he went into the house again.
“How my brain throbs!” he said; “surely you said the throbbing brain
was a sign, mother; and my brain _does_ throb.”
“Tut, tut! it's nobbut some maggot thou's gitten intil it.”
“My pulse, too, it gallops, mother. You said the galloping pulse was a
sign. Don't say you did not. I'm sure of it, I'm sure of it; and _my_
pulse gallops. I could bear the parched mouth and the throbbing brain
if this pulse did not run so fast.”
“Get away wi' thee, thou dummel-heed. What fagot has got hold on thy
fancy now?”
There was only the swollen gland wanted to make the dread symptoms
complete.
Garth went back to the anvil once more. His eyes rolled in his head.
They grew as red as the iron that he was welding. He swore at the boy
who helped him, and struck him fiercely. He shouted frantically, and
flung away the hammer at every third blow. The boy slunk off, and went
home affrighted. At a sudden impulse, Garth tore away the shirt from
his breast, and thrust his left hand beneath his right arm. With that
the suspense was ended. A mood of the deepest sadness and dejection
supervened. Shuddering in every limb beneath all his perspiration, the
blacksmith returned for the last time to the house.
“I wouldn't mind the parched mouth and the throbbing brain; no, nor
the galloping pulse, mother; but oh, mother, mother, the gland, it's
swelled; ey, ey, it's swelled. I'm doomed, I'm doomed. No use saying
no. I'm a dead man, that's the truth, that's the truth, mother.”
And then the disease, whether plague or other fever, passed its fiery
hand over the throbbing brain of the blacksmith, and he was put to bed
raving.
Little Betsy, like the boy in the smithy, stole away to her own home
with ghastly stories of the blacksmith's illness and delirium.
At first the neighbors came to inquire, prompted partly by curiosity,
but mainly by fear. Mrs. Garth shut the door, and refused to open it
to any comers.
To enforce seclusion was not long a necessity. Desertion was soon the
portion of the Garths, mother and son. More swift than a bad name
passed the terrible conviction among the people at Wythburn that at
last, at long last, the plague, the plague itself, was in their midst.
The smithy cottage stood by the bridge, and to reach the market town
by the road it was necessary to pass it within five yards. Pitiful,
indeed, were the artifices to escape contagion resorted to by some who
professed the largest faith in the will of God. They condemned
themselves to imprisonment within their own houses, or abandoned their
visits to Gaskarth, or made a circuit of a mile across the breast of a
hill, in order to avoid coming within range of the proscribed
dwelling.
After three days of rumor and surmise, there was not a soul in the
district would go within fifty yards of the house that was believed to
hold the pestilence. No doctor approached it, for none had been
summoned. The people who brought provisions left them in the road
outside, and hailed the inmates. Mrs. Garth sat alone with her
stricken son, and if there had been eyes to see her there in her
solitude and desolation, perhaps the woman who seemed hard as flint to
the world was softening in her sorrow. When the delirium passed away,
and Garth lay conscious, but still feverish, his mother was bewailing
their desertion.
“None come nigh to us, Joey, none come nigh. That's what the worth of
neighbors is, my lad. They'd leave us to die, both on us; they'd leave
us alone to die, and none wad come nigh.”
“Alone, mother! Did you say alone?” asked Garth.
“We're not alone, mother. Some one _has_ come nigh to us.”
Mrs. Garth looked up amazed, and half turned in her seat to glance
watchfully around.
“Mother,” said Garth, “did you ever pray?”
“Hod thy tongue, lad, hod thy tongue,” said Mrs. Garth, with a
whimper.
“Did you ever pray, mother?” repeated Garth, his red eyes aflame, and
his voice cracking in his throat. “Whisht, Joey, whisht!”
“Mother, we've not lived over well, you and I; but maybe God would
forgive us, after all.”
“Hod thy tongue, my lad; do, now, do.”
Mrs. Garth fumbled with the bedclothes, and tucked them about the
sufferer.
Her son turned his face full upon hers, and their eyes met.
“Dunnet look at me like that,” she said, trying to escape his gaze.
“What's comin' ower thee, my lad, that thou looks so, and talks so?”
“What's coming over me, mother? Shall I tell thee? It's Death that's
coming over me; that's what it is, mother--Death!”
“Dunnet say that, Joey.”
The old woman threw her apron over her head and sobbed.
Garth looked at her, with never a tear in his wide eyes.
“Mother,” said the poor fellow again in his weak, cracked
voice,--“mother, did you ever pray?”
Mrs. Garth uncovered her head. Her furrowed face was wet. She rocked
herself and moaned.
“Ey, lad, I mind that I did when I was a wee bit of a girl. I had rosy
cheeks then, and my own auld mother wad kiss me then. Ey, it's true.
We went to church on a Sunday mornin' and all the bells ringin'. Ey, I
mind that, but it's a wa', wa' off, my lad, it's a wa', wa' off.”
The day was gaunt and dreary. Toward nightfall the wind arose, and
sometimes its dismal wail seemed to run around the house. The river,
too, now swollen and turbulent, that flowed beneath the neighboring
bridge, added its voice of lamentation as it wandered on and on to the
ocean far away.
In the blacksmith's cottage another wanderer was journeying yet faster
to a more distant ocean. The darkness closed in. Garth was tossing on
his bed. His mother was rocking herself at his side. All else was
still.
Then a step was heard on the shingle without, and a knock came to the
door. The blacksmith struggled to lift his head and listen. Mrs. Garth
paused in her rocking and ceased to moan.
“Who ever is it?” whispered Garth.
“Let them stay where they are, whoever it be,” his mother mumbled,
never shifting from her seat. The knock came again.
“Nay, mother, nay; it is too late to--”
He had said no more when the latch was lifted, and Rotha Stagg walked
into the room.
“I've come to help to nurse you, if you please,” she said, addressing
the sick man.
Garth looked steadily at her for a moment, every feature quivering.
Shame, fear, horror--any sentiment but welcome--was written on his
face. Then he straggled to twist his poor helpless body away; his
head, at least, he turned from her to the wall.
“It wad look better of folk if they'd wait till they're axt,” muttered
Mrs. Garth, with downcast eyes.
Rotha unpinned the shawls that had wrapped her from the cold, and
threw them over a chair. She stirred the fire and made it burn
brightly; there was no other light in the room. The counterpane, which
had been dragged away in the restlessness of the sufferer, she spread
afresh. Reaching over the bed, she raised the sick man's head tenderly
on her arm while she beat out his pillow. Never once did he lift his
eyes to hers.
Mrs. Garth still rocked herself in her seat. “Folks should wait till
they're wanted,” she mumbled again; but the words broke down into a
stifled sob.
Rotha lit a candle that stood at hand, went to the cupboard in the
corner of the adjoining kitchen, and took out a jar of barley; then to
the hearth and took up a saucepan. In two minutes she was boiling
something on the fire.
Mrs. Garth was following every movement with watchful eyes.
Presently the girl came to the bedside again with a basin in her hand.
“Take a little of this, Mr. Garth,” she said. “Your mouth is parched.”
“How did you know that?” he muttered, lifting his eyes at last.
She made no reply, but held her cool hand to his burning forehead. He
motioned to her to draw it away. She did so.
“It's not safe--it's not safe for you, girl,” he said in his thin
whisper, his breath coming and going between every word.
She smiled, put back her hand and brushed the dank hair from his moist
brow.
Mrs. Garth got up from her seat by the bedside and hobbled to the
fire. There she sat on a low stool, and threw her apron over her head.
Again raising the blacksmith from his pillow, Rotha put a spoonful of
barley-water to his withered lips. He was more docile than a child
now, and let her have her will.
For a moment he looked at her with melancholy eyes, and then, shifting
his gaze, he said,--
“You had troubles enow of your own, Rotha, without coming to share
ours--mother's and mine.”
“Yes,” she answered, and a shadow crossed the cheerful face.
“Will they banish him?” he said with quick-coming breath. “Mother says
so; will they banish him from the country?”
“Yes, perhaps; but it will be to another and a better country,” said
Rotha, and dropped her head.
Garth glanced inquiringly into her face. His mother shifted on her
stool.
“How, how?” he said, nervously clutching at the bedclothes.
“Why do you bother him, girl?” said Mrs. Garth, turning about. “Rest
thee, my lad, rest thee still.”
“Mother,” said Garth, drawing back his head, but never shifting the
determination of his gaze from Rotha's face, “what does she mean?”
“Haud thy tongue, Joey.”
“What does she mean, mother?”
“Whisht! Never heed folks that meddle afore they're axt.”
Mrs. Garth spoke peevishly, rose from her seat, and walked between
Rotha and the bed.
Garth's wide eyes were still riveted on the girl's face.
“Never mind that she's not asked,” he said; “but what does she mean,
mother? What lie is it that she comes to tell us!”
“No lie, Mr. Garth,” said Rotha, with tearful eyes. “Ralph and father
are condemned to die, and they are innocent.”
“Tush! get away wi' thee!” mumbled Mrs. Garth, brushing the girl aside
with her elbow. The blacksmith glared at her, and seemed to gasp for
breath.
“It _is_ a lie; mother, tell her it _is_ a lie.”
“God knows it is not,” cried Rotha passionately.
“Say I believed it,” said Garth, rising convulsively on one elbow,
with a ghastly stare; “say I believed that the idiots had condemned
them to death for a crime they never committed--never; say I believed
it--but it's a lie, that's what it is. Girl, girl, how can you come
with a lie on your lips to a poor dying man? Cruel! cruel! Have you no
pity, none, for a wretched dying man?”
The tears rolled down Rotha's cheeks. Mrs. Garth returned to her
stool, and rocked herself and moaned.
The blacksmith glared from one to the other, the sweat standing in
heavy beads on his forehead.
Then an awful scream burst from his lips. His face was horribly
distorted.
“It is true,” he cried, and fell back and rolled on the bed.
All that night the fiery hand lay on the blacksmith's brain, and he
tossed in a wild delirium.
The wind's wail ran round the house, and the voice of that brother
wanderer, the river beneath the bridge crept over the silence when the
sufferer lay quiet and the wind was still.
No candle was now lighted, but the fire on the hearth burnt bright.
Mrs. Garth sat before it, hardly once glancing up.
Again and again her son cried to her with the yearning cry of a little
child. At such times the old woman would shrink within herself, and
moan and cower over the fire, and smoke a little black pipe.
Hour after hour the blacksmith rolled in his bed in a madness too
terrible to record. The memory of his blasphemies seemed to come back
upon him in his raving, and add fresh agony to his despair.
A naked soul stood face to face with the last reality, battling
meantime, with an unseen foe. There was to be no jugglery now.
Oh! that awful night, that void night, that night of the wind's wail
and the dismal moan of the wandering river, and the frequent cry of a
poor, miserable, desolate, despairing, naked soul! Had its black wings
settled forever over all the earth?
No. The dawn came at last. Its faint streak of light crept lazily in
at the curtainless window.
Then Garth raised himself in his bed.
“Give me paper--paper and a pen--quick, quick!” he cried.
“What would you write, Joe?” said Rotha.
“I want to write to him--to Ralph--Ralph Ray,” he said, in a voice
quite unlike his own.
Rotha ran to the chest in the kitchen and opened it. In a side shelf
pens were there and paper too. She came back, and put them before the
sick man.
But he was unconscious of what she had done.
She looked into his face. His eyes seemed not to see.
“The paper and pen!” he cried again, yet more eagerly.
She put the quill into his hand and spread the paper before him.
“What writing is this,” he cried, pointing to the white sheet; “this
writing in red?”
“Where?”
“Here--everywhere.”
The pen dropped from his nerveless fingers.
“To think they will take a dying man!” he said. “You would scarce
think they would have the heart, these people. You would scarce think
it, would you?” he said, lifting his poor glassy eyes to Rotha's face.
“Perhaps they don't know,” she answered soothingly, and tried to
replace him on his pillow.
“That's true,” he muttered; “perhaps they don't know how ill I am.”
At that instant he caught sight of his mother's ill-shapen figure
cowering over the fire. Clutching Rotha's arm with one hand, he
pointed at his mother with the other, and said, with an access of
strength,--
“I've found her out; I've found her out.”
Then he laughed till it seemed to Rotha that the blood stood still in
her heart.
When the full flood of daylight streamed into the little room, Garth
had sunk into a deep sleep.