THE PLAGUE AT STRATFORD.
The swift passage of events, and which it has taken some little time to
record, has necessarily obliged us to omit mention of several minor
characters of our story, but who, nevertheless, have been playing their
parts upon the stage as well as those of greater note and import.
Amongst others, Master Dismal, whose cue it seemed to ferret out all
sorts of disagreeables and who seemed to batton upon horrors, had not
failed to follow up the hint promulgated at the Falcon regarding the
sickness which had appeared in the town.
At the period of our story the plague was no uncommon visitor in the
different towns in England, and awful were the consequences of such
visitation when it appeared.
In cases of this sort when some dire disease breaks out amongst the poor
and ignorant, they generally at first conceal it. Struck with dismay,
they yet resolve to doubt the suspicious appearance till confirmation of
its reality drives them to disclosure.
The plague was indeed so much dreaded at this time, that those first
infected were looked upon with as much horror and dislike as if they
were absolutely guilty of its production.
The very suspicion of its appearance was sufficient to frighten the town
from its propriety. The inhabitants withdrew from the businesses and
pleasures of life like snails within their shells. Each feared his
neighbour, and all around was distrust and dread. It was this fear,
together with the unclean state of the town, and most of the houses in
it, which made the pestilence so quick and be fatal in its effects.
Evils, it has been said, are more to be dreaded from the suddenness of
their attack than from their magnitude or duration. In the storms of
life those that are foreseen are half overcome.
This disease, however, was in general as formidable and as difficult to
get rid of in a town, as its coining was sudden and unexpected. It was
like the wind which sailors term the tiffoon, pouncing upon the vessel
like an eagle upon the prey, and paralyzing the victim at once.
Master Dismal had received intelligence of this visitation by an
anonymous communication, written upon a dirty scrap of paper, and which
had been one night thrown in at his window.
The scrawl was in such strange hieroglyphics, and so vaguely worded,
that any other person beside himself would have failed in hitting upon
its hidden meaning; but the busy-body had a peculiar facility in
deciphering and discovering horrors. Nay, his visitations amongst his
neighbours and townsfolk were generally looked upon by them as a sure
harbinger of evil in one shape or other. He was a sort of stormy petrel
in the town, a forerunner of danger and despair. He even loved to watch
the progress of misery and disease, contemplating the ills mankind are
subject to, with a philosophic eye.
If a whole family were to be swept off, his visits continued as long as
the disease lasted amongst them; and he made his entrance and took his
leave with the doctor.
In fact, it was his recreation to study the maladies and miseries "the
poor compounded clay, man, is heir to." Accidents and wounds, and indeed
every sort of infliction his neighbours were subject to, it was his
humour to watch curiously,--nay, he was even interested in the sight of
a felon's ear, nailed to the cart wheel, whilst a knave set in the
stocks, or a vagabond whipped through the town, was a matter of
reflection, and a spectacle to be hunted after: and when Dame Patch was
placed upon the cuckin stool, and then ducked in the Avon for lying and
slander, he was observed next day to pay her a visit of condolence,
whilst some affirmed that he had even remained a whole week in her
dwelling to offer her consolation in her distress.
In addition to these peculiarities, we need hardly mention that the
funeral bell was at any time a grateful sound to his ears, seldom
failing to call him forth from his home, whatever his employment might
happen to be.
Then again he loved to contemplate a batch of dirty urchins, in all the
enjoyment of mud and mire, freedom and mischief, revelling in
undisturbed possession of the kennel or the road, and to speculate upon
the chances against one-third of them reaching maturity, or their
probable fate if they did so.
Following the clue given him by the anonymous communication, and which
he had received a few hours before he announced the news it contained at
the Falcon, he had made a search through the locality hinted at. The
note, which was vaguely and notoriously worded, had pointed to some
house in the suburbs; and, after duly calling over the different persona
whom he considered likely to have been the writer of the billet, he
fixed it upon a crazy, half insane fellow, living in a lone house in
Henley Street.
Accordingly, when the shadows of evening descended, he went prying
about, and peeping into all the windows, and listening at all the doors
on either side that street. "Wat Murdake," he said to himself, "is a
maniac,--a dangerous fellow at times, having fits of violence quite
awful to look on. He killed his wife with a shoemaker's awl, pierced her
ear when she was asleep,--at least, so it is said, and he confesses it
even now in his ravings,--but that's nought. Many an old host that I
know would be glad to do the same, if they dared, for the women do drive
men to desperate deeds with that unruly member, the tongue. Wat Murdake
is a dangerous fellow at times, and exceedingly mad always, but then he
is pretty cunning, and keepeth a sure eye upon his neighbour. An I
cannot find these plague spots, I will seek him and make inquiry, for
'tis good I saw into the matter at once.
"Ah! what's that I hear? A scream? No, it's only a child squalling, and
the mother singing it to sleep with a merry song. There's no misery
there. So pass we on to the next. What's that, a groan? No, it's a
fellow practising on the bass-viol. All right I trow there; where music
_is_, contentment rests, and no plague. What's this?" he continued,
listening at the next house, "lamentations and words of woe? No, it's
man and wife quarrelling. Ah! and there they go to blows. There is no
real misery there, but what they make for themselves; they've plague
enough, but not the plague I seek. Pass we on again. What's here? the
bones rattling? Yes, dicing, drinking, and brawl. It's not there.
It _may_ come to that, but they don't begin _so_. There'll be
death, perhaps, in the house, but it will be by violence, _not
disease_--to-night, to-morrow, perhaps; who knows? And so Master Dismal
passed on from door to door, taking his cue of good or ill from the
employment of the inmates of the different houses. At length he came to
a lone, squalid-looking hut, the last but one in the street, standing in
its own untrimmed and neglected garden; a ruin with walls so rent as to
shew one-half of its heavy-beamed rooms in a skeleton state; the
remainder being patched up to expel the wind and rain, and reclaimed, as
it were, in a slovenly manner, from the general state of decay.
The toad sat and croaked in the long damp grass, and the lizard crawled
over the muddy pathway to the door, as Dismal stopped and listened.
"This looks like business," he said, "I quite forgot this house of
ill-omen. Ah! what a dirty-mantled pond in the garden! Here we have it,
sure enough! there's no mistaking these sounds! Let me see, this is the
residence of Smite Drear and his family, the most drunken,
ill-conducted, dirty, evil-minded lot in all Warwickshire--the man a
vile caitiff, a puritan whose tongue is ruin; the woman a slanderer
also, and a termagant; the children thieves, liars, and imps of ill.
_I'm sure it's here_; _I know it's here_; it _must_ be here; it _ought_
to be here; it _is_ here. Yea, and here it _is_, sure enough! If I could
only get a peep into the interior, I should know in a minute. Let me
see; where's my pouncet-box? Ah! there's another groan, and the sob of a
female! I hear some one praying too; rather unusual _that_, I trow. I
must go in. _But no_, I cannot _get_ in, the door is fastened; I'll
knock."
It was some time before the summons of Master Dismal was answered. But
at last the owner of the hovel removed a broken shutter from an upper
window, and thrusting out his head, growled a malediction upon the
person disturbing him.
"Pass on," he said, "and trouble us not."
"I would crave permission," said Dismal, "to pay a visit on matters----"
"_Crave_ nothing here," said Drear, "_Seek_ nothing here. Sickness and
death are within our doors: we are accursed."
"I would fain offer consolation, and observe the nature of your
illness," said Dismal. "I would inform the leech, or even summon _other_
aid in your need."
"Who is it speaks?" said Drear, thrusting his head further out. "All, I
see! Hence, screech-owl--bird of ill; hence, wretch, lest I come down
and beat thee! Hence, hound, whose bark never boded aught but death to
the sick man. We wanted but thy visit to make us certain of our fate."
So saying, Drear violently put up his shutter and withdrew.
"Ah," said Dismal, "you may talk, my master, till you've tired yourself.
But I know all about it now. If I cannot get _in_, by my troth I'll take
care to put a sign which shall hinder you from getting _out_. Plague or
no plague, I'll cause them to look in upon you who have authority to do
so." So saying. Master Dismal took a large lump of red ochre from his
pocket, and with considerable care marked up a broad red cross upon the
door. He then, as he knew it was about the hour the watch passed,
quietly withdrew to the opposite side of the street, and ensconsing
himself behind the buttress of a wall, waited the event.
In a short time the watch came up; they passed Master Dismal where he
stood without discovering him and then proceeded to the very end of the
street. According to their custom (in making the rounds at night) they
then halted, ordered their pikes, trimmed their lights, and stood at
ease for a few minutes, ere they returned down the other side of the
street; examining each door they passed by holding up the light they
carried.
At the first tenement they found nothing extraordinary, the fellow who
carried the light, which was a sort of cresset at the end of a bar of
iron, held it aloft, and as its lurid glare fell upon the house, it
displayed its walls clear as in open daylight. "All right, pass," said
the head constable, and so they passed on to the next.
Here the constable carrying the cresset was merely about to raise it and
pass on, when, as he did so, the whole party were arrested in speechless
alarm by a sign they knew too well from former visitation. "The plague!"
said the first, in a voice modulated almost to a whisper. "The plague!"
said the second, "why I heard not of it before." "The searcher's mark,"
said the second, "I knew not that he had been sent out." "Advance your
light again, Diccon," said a third, "and observe if the house be
padlocked up." "I see no fastening," said Diccon, "and yet, 'tis the
searcher's mark, sure enough; pass on, in heaven's name, comrades;" and
on passed the watch, no longer with measured tread, but with accelerated
and fearful steps, to inform the headborough of what they had seen:
Master Dismal stealing after them in a state of the most exuberant glee
at his own conceit and its success.
The spread of the disease, as was usual at this period, was extremely
rapid. Indeed, it had risen to some height in the town before the
authorities would consent to believe it really existed. In such cases,
and in former days, precautionary measures were seldom thought of. Men
drove off all thought of the evil; when they found it was really amongst
them, or what they feared, they kept to themselves. At first they turned
sulky under the infliction, if we may so term it, barring up their doors
and deserting the streets; they avoided each other as much as possible,
seeking air and recreation and forgetfulness by taking to the wastes and
commons around. Leaving their homes by the back doors, they almost
deserted the streets in search of the necessaries of life. As it grew
worse the town seemed depopulated, even before the disease had time to
work, so empty were its streets.
But a few days had passed since all the out-door sports and diversions
of the age and the season had been in full play. Those gay and jovial
May-day games, in the quaint mazes of the wanton green; those rural
fetes and diversions--the wakes and revels--the May-pole dances--the
parties of pleasure--into the shadowy desert unfrequented woods, and
which the peasantry of old were so fond of, all had ceased as it were on
the instant. The human mortals feared each other, a secret
dread--however each member of a family kept the native colour of his
cheek--was in the heart of each. The very air seemed infected, and tho
aspect of the town took a ghastly hue. It smelt of death, men thought.
Business stopped in it. No markets were attended. No strangers passed
through it. It was a place infected, avoided, accursed.