UNDER THE RED CROSS
The main door slammed upon those precipitately departing men. Their
running steps clattered over the cobbles of the street, and receded
quickly out of earshot.
Colonel Holles and the woman he had sought so passionately long years
ago, until despair had turned him from the quest, were alone together
at last in that house, brought thither by that ironic destiny of his,
in circumstances of horror piled on horror. The very act by which at
last he had found her irrevocably lost her to him again. The very
chance that had brought them together, after all these years, flung
them at the same time farther apart than they had ever been; and this,
without taking into account the fact that she was a woman now with the
seal of death upon her. Was he not Fortune’s fool indeed?
The violent slamming of that door appeared to rouse him to a further
degree of consciousness. Painfully he got to his knees, and with dazed
eyes looked round the room. Again he brushed back the tangle of hair
from his brow, and thereafter dully considered his hand which was wet
and smeared with blood. The mists that enveloped his brain, obscuring
and confusing his mental view of the events that had occurred before he
was stricken down and since consciousness had begun to return to him,
were now gradually dispersing. Understanding of where he was and how
he had come there grew clear at last. He rose to his feet, and stood
swaying a moment, looking round, dull-eyed as a drunkard.
He beheld Nancy, her shoulders turned to him, contemplating herself
in an oblong Venetian mirror that adorned the wall beyond the table,
and in the mirror itself he beheld the reflection of her face. It was
ashen, and there was a staring, ghastly horror in her eyes. It was
then that he began to remember and piece together the incidents of the
confused scene upon which his gaze had fallen when first his mind was
dimly rousing itself. Again he saw Buckingham, crouching and shuddering
as he backed away from Nancy, pointing to her the while with a palsied
hand, and again he heard the Duke’s quavering voice, and the dread
words it uttered.
He understood. Nancy was safe from Buckingham. She had been snatched
from the Duke at the eleventh hour by a ravisher even more merciless
and infinitely more foul.
This she was herself realizing as she contemplated her image in that
little mirror and beheld the brand of the pestilence on her white
breast. Although she had never before seen that betraying purple
blotch, yet she had heard it described, and she could have had no
doubt of its significance even without the terrified explanation that
Buckingham had supplied. Whether it was from horror of what she beheld,
or whether from the workings of the fell disease--which may also have
been responsible for those moments of dizziness by which she had been
earlier assailed, but which she had assigned to emotion--she found her
image contracting and expanding now before her eyes; then she felt the
room rocking about her, the ground heaving under her feet as if it had
been the unstable deck of a ship. She reeled back, and knew, without
power to help herself, that she was falling, when suddenly she felt
herself caught, and supported.
She looked up, and beheld the ghastly, blood-smeared face of Randal
Holles, who had sprung instinctively to her assistance. For a long
moment she stared at him, dull-eyed, a little frown of effort drawing
her brows together. Dully then she spoke:
“Do not touch me. Did you not hear? I have the plague.”
“Aye ... I heard,” he answered.
“You will take the infection,” she warned him.
“It is very likely,” said he, “but no great matter.”
On that he lifted her in his arms, as he had lifted her once before
that night. Despite his shaken condition, the act cost him but little
effort, for she was very slim and light. Unresisting--for she was too
dazed and weak for any physical resistance now--she suffered him to
bear her to the daybed. There he set her down at full length, carefully
adjusting the wine-coloured cushions, so as to give ease to her head
and limbs.
Then he passed round the couch to the shuttered windows, unbarred them,
and set the casement wide to let a draught of the clean, cool night air
into the stifling room. That done, he turned, and remained standing
there beside the couch, looking down upon her with eyes that were as
the eyes of some poor dumb beast in pain.
The cool air revived her a little, set her pulses beating more
steadily, and cleared her mind of some of the numbness that had
been settling upon it. For a spell she lay there, panting a little,
remembering and realizing the situation and her own condition. Then she
raised her eyes to look at the ghastly, haggard face above her, and to
meet that anguished glance. For a little while she stared at him, her
own countenance expressionless.
“Why do you stay?” she asked him at length in a dull voice. “Go ... go
your ways, sir, and leave me to die. It is, I think, all that remains
to do. And ... and I think that I shall die the easier without your
company.”
He stepped back as if she had struck him. He made as if to answer
her; then his parted lips came together again, his chin sank until it
touched his breast. He turned, and with dragging feet walked slowly out
of the room, softly closing the door.
She lay there invaded suddenly by a great fear. She strained her ears
to catch the sounds of his footsteps in the passage, until finally
the slamming of the door leading to the street announced to her that,
taking her at her word, he was gone, indeed. She sat up in alarm,
holding her breath, listening to his steps moving quickly now, almost
at a run, up the street. At last she could hear them no longer. Her
fears mounted. For all her brave talk, the thought of dying alone,
abandoned, in this empty house filled her with terror; so that it
seemed to her now that even the company of that dastard would have been
better than this horror of loneliness in the hour of death.
She attempted to rise, to follow, to seek the companionship of
human beings who might yet afford her some assistance and ease her
sufferings. But her limbs refused their office. She got to her feet
merely to collapse again, exhausted. And now she flung herself prone
upon the daybed, and sobbed aloud until the searing pain in her breast
conquered even her self-pity, and stretched her writhing in agony as if
upon a rack. At last a merciful unconsciousness supervened.
And meanwhile Holles was moving mechanically and instinctively at speed
up Sermon Lane in the direction of Paul’s. Why he should have chosen
to go that way sooner than another he could not have told you. The
streets were utterly deserted even at that early hour, for this was not
a time in which folk chose to roam abroad at nights, and, moreover,
the Lord Mayor’s enactments now compelled all taverns and houses of
entertainment to close at nine o’clock.
Without hat or cloak, his empty scabbard dangling like a limp tail
about his legs, he sped onward, a man half-distracted, with but a vague
notion of his object and none of the direction in which its fulfilment
would be likeliest. As he was approaching Carter Lane, a lantern came
dancing like a will-o’-the-wisp round the corner to meet him, and
presently the dark outline of the man who carried it grew visible. This
man walked with the assistance of a staff which at closer quarters the
lantern’s rays revealed to be red in colour. With a gasp of relief,
Holles flung forward towards him.
“Keep your distance, sir! Keep your distance!” a voice warned him out
of the gloom. “’Ware infection.”
But Holles went recklessly on until the long red wand was raised and
pointed towards him to arrest his advance.
“Are you mad, sir?” the man cried sharply. Holles could make out now
the pallid outline of his face, which the broad brim of his steeple-hat
had hitherto kept almost entirely in shadow. “I am an examiner of
infected houses.”
“It is as I hoped,” panted Holles ... “that yours might be some such
office. I need a doctor, man, quickly, for one who is taken with the
plague.”
The examiner’s manner became brisk at once.
“Where?” he demanded.
“Close at hand here, in Knight Ryder Street.”
“Why, then, Dr. Beamish, there at the corner, is your man. Come.”
And thus it happened that, from the sleep which had succeeded the swoon
that so mercifully whelmed her senses, Nancy was aroused by a sound of
steps and voices. Where she lay she faced the door of the room. And, as
through billows of mist that now rolled before her eyes, she saw the
tall figure of Colonel Holles enter followed by two strangers. One of
these was a little birdlike man of middle age; the other was young and
of a broad frame and a full countenance. Both were dressed in black,
and each carried the red wand which the law prescribed.
The younger man, who was the examiner met by Holles in Sermon Lane,
came no farther than the threshold. He was holding close to his
nostrils a cloth that gave out a pungent, vinegary smell, and his jaws
worked vigorously the while, for he was chewing a stick of snake-root
as a further measure of prevention. Meanwhile, his companion, who was
that same Dr. Beamish he had recommended, approached the patient and
made a swift, practised, and silent examination.
She suffered it in silence, too utterly trammelled by lethargy to give
much thought or care to what might now betide her.
The physician held her wrist for a moment in his bony fingers, the
middle one upon her pulse. Next he carefully examined the blotch upon
her throat. Finally he raised first one of her arms and then the other,
whilst Holles at his bidding held the candle-branch so as to cast the
light into the armpit. A grunt escaped him upon the discovery of a
swelling in the right one.
“This is unusually soon,” he said. “It is seldom before the third day
that there is such a manifestation.”
With the forefinger he tested the consistency of that swelling, sending
sharp, fiery streams of pain through all her body as it seemed to her.
He lowered the arm again, and straightened himself, considering her a
moment with pursed lips and thoughtful eyes.
At his elbow Holles spoke in a toneless voice:
“Does it ... does it mean that her case is beyond hope?”
The physician looked at him.
“_Dum vivimus, speremus_,” said he. “Her case need not be hopeless
any more than another’s. Much depends upon the energy with which the
disease is fought.”
He saw the flash of Holles’s eyes at that, as through the Colonel’s
mind sped the vow that if it was a matter of a fight he was there to
wage it. He would fight the plague for her as fiercely as he had fought
Buckingham. Beholding his sudden transfiguration, the physician, in
charity--lest the man should delude himself with false hopes--thought
well to add:
“Much depends upon that. But more--indeed all--upon God, my friend.” He
spoke to Holles as to a husband, for that, indeed, was the relationship
in which he conceived him to stand to the afflicted lady. “If
suppuration of that swelling can be induced, recovery is possible. More
I cannot say. To induce that suppuration infinite pains and tireless
labour may be necessary.”
“She may depend on that,” said Holles.
The physician nodded. “Nurses,” he added slowly, “are scarce and
difficult to procure. I will do my best to find you one as soon as
possible. Until then you will have to depend entirely upon yourself.”
“I am ready.”
“And in any case the law does not allow you to leave this house until
you can receive a certificate of health--which cannot be until one
month after her recovery or....” He broke off, leaving the alternative
unnamed, and added hurriedly: “That is Sir John Lawrence’s wise
provision for checking the spread of the infection.”
“I am aware of it and of my position,” said Holles.
“So much the better, then. And now, my friend, there is no time to
lose. Speed in applying remedies is often all. She must be brought as
quickly as may be into a free and full perspiration and for that she
must be got to bed without delay. If her life is to be saved, you must
get to work at once.”
“Tell me but what to do, sir.”
“Not only that; I come prepared to leave you all that you will require.”
He produced a bulky package from his pocket, and, beckoning Holles
to the table, there opened it, and enumerated the lesser packages it
contained and the purposes of each.
“Here is a stimulating ointment with which you will rub the swelling
in the armpit every two hours. Thereafter you will apply to it a
poultice of mallows, linseed, and palm oil. Here is mithridate, of
which you will administer a dose as an alexipharmic, and two hours
later you will give her a posset drink of Canary and spirits of
sulphur. The spirits of sulphur are here. Make a fire of sea-coal in
her bedroom, and heap all available blankets upon her, that she may
throw out as much as may be of the poison in perspiring.
“For to-night, if you do that, you will have done all that can be done.
I shall return very early in the morning, and we will then consider
further measures.”
He turned to the examiner: “You have heard, sir?”
The man nodded. “I’ve already bidden the constable send a watchman. He
will be here by now and I’ll see the house closed when we go forth.”
“It but remains, then,” said the doctor, “to have the lady put to bed.
Then I will take my leave of you until to-morrow.”
This, however, was a service the lady was still able to perform
for herself. When Holles, disregarding the physician’s aid, had,
single-handed, carried her to the room above, she recovered
sufficiently to demand that she should be left to herself; and, despite
her obvious weakness, Dr. Beamish concurred that to permit her to have
her own way in the matter would be to make the more speed in the end.
The effort of undressing, however, so exhausted her and awoke such
torturing pains that, when at last she got to bed, she lay there,
panting, reduced to a state of utter prostration.
Thus Holles and the physician found her on their return. Dr. Beamish
placed upon a table at the foot of the bed all the things that Holles
would require, and, repeating his injunctions, took his leave at last.
The Colonel went with him to the door of the house. This was standing
open, and by the light of a lantern held by the watchman the examiner
was completing the rudely wrought inscription, _Lord have mercy upon
us_, under the ominous red cross which he had daubed above.
Bidding Holles a good-night and a stout courage, the physician and
the examiner departed together. The watchman, who remained to hinder
any unauthorized person from passing in or out, then closed the door.
Holles heard the key being turned on the outside, and knew himself a
prisoner in that infected house for weeks to come, unless death should
chance to set him free meanwhile.
Quickly now, urged by the thought of his task, utterly disregarding
the dull aching of his bruised head, he mounted the stairs again.
A memory flashed through his mind of those three gallants whom her
cries had attracted to her rescue, and who would have delivered her
from his clutches, but that he had scared them away with the lie--as
he supposed it then--that she was infected with the plague. Had their
rescue succeeded, in what case would she be now? Would there be one at
hand to fight such a fight as that for which he was braced and ready;
to give his life at need, freely and without a pang, that he might save
her own? Out of the anguish of his soul, out of the depths into which
he was plunged, he thanked God for this fight that lay before him, for
this disposition which made good come out of evil.
He found her in a state of lethargy which, whilst leaving her a full
consciousness of all that had occurred and was occurring about her, yet
robbed her of all power of speech or movement. Lying there, her head
supported by the pillows, which it had been the doctor’s last service
to adjust, her wide, fevered eyes followed every movement of the
Colonel’s as, stripped now of his doublet, he went briskly about the
business of preparation. Anon under the pain which his ministrations
caused her, she sank into unconsciousness, and thence into a raving
delirium which for days thereafter was to alternate with periods of
lethargic, exhausted slumber.