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Out of concern for her charge, Mrs. Dallows at once dispatched the
watchman for Dr. Beamish, and, when the physician arrived some little
while later, she acquainted him with the Colonel’s evasion and the
consequent partially stunned condition in which Miss Sylvester appeared
to move.
The good doctor, who had come to conceive some measure of affection for
those two, rooted, perhaps, in a certain pity which their mysterious,
but obviously unhappy, relations aroused in him, went at once in
deepest distress to seek Miss Sylvester, who had meanwhile returned to
her own room above-stairs. He found her affliction the more distressing
to observe by virtue of her unnatural composure.
“This is terrible, my dear,” he said, as he took her hands. “What can
have driven that unhappy man to so ... so unfortunate a course?”
“He must be sought. You will order search to be made for him?” she
cried.
He sighed and sorrowfully shook his head: “There is no need for me to
order that. My duty compels me to make his evasion known. Search for
him will follow; but, should he be found, it may go very hard with him;
there are rigorous penalties.”
Thus, unavoidably, Dr. Beamish but added a fresh burden to her already
surcharged heart. It reduced her to a state of mind bordering upon
distraction. She knew not what to desire. Unless he were sought and
found, it followed that she would never see him again, whilst if he
were found he would have to reckon with the severity of the law, and
she could have no assurance that she would see him even then.
Out of his anxiety to help her, Dr. Beamish invited her confidence. He
conceived here a case of stupid, headstrong, human pride against which
two hearts were likely to be broken, and, because of that affection
which they had come to inspire in him, he would have done all in his
power to assist them could he but have obtained an indication of the
way. But Miss Sylvester, greatly as it would have eased her sorrow to
have confided in him, greatly as she desired to do so, found that no
confidence was possible without divulging the thing that Holles had
done, the hideous act by which she came to find herself in this house.
A sudden sense of loyalty to him made it impossible for her to publish
his infamy.
So, rejecting the chance to ease by confidence the burden that she
carried, she continued to move, white-faced and listless, under the
load of it during the two remaining days of her detention. Nor did
the doctor come to her again until that third morning, when he was
once more accompanied by the examiner, who presented her and her
nurse-keeper each with a certificate of health that permitted their
free departure. Holles, she was then informed, had not yet been found;
but she knew not whether to rejoice or sorrow in that fact.
Bearers were procured for her, the watchman himself volunteering to act
as one of them, and the chair in which she had been carried thither,
which had been bestowed in the house itself, was brought forth again at
her request, to carry her away.
“But whither are you going?” the doctor questioned her in solicitude.
They were standing in the doorway of the house, she with her light
hooded mantle of blue taffetas drawn over her white gown, the chair
standing in the sunlight, waiting to receive her.
“Why, home. Back to my own lodging,” she answered simply.
“Home?” he echoed, in amazement. “But ... but, then ... this house?”
She looked at him as if puzzled by his astonishment. Then she smiled
wanly. “This house is not mine. I was here by ... by chance when I was
taken ill.”
The belated revelation of that unsuspected circumstance filled him with
a sudden dread on her behalf. Knowing the changes that had come upon
that unfortunate City in the month that was overpast, knowing how many
were the abandoned houses that stood open now to the winds of heaven,
he feared with reason that hers might be one of these, or, at least,
that the odds were all against her finding her home, as she imagined,
in the condition in which she had left it.
“Where is your lodging?” he asked her.
She told him, adding that upon arrival there she would determine her
future movements. She thought, she ended, that she would seek awhile
the peace and quiet of the country. Perhaps she would return to London
when this visitation was at an end; perhaps she would not. That was
what she said. What she meant was really something very different.
The announcement served to increase his dismay on her behalf. It was
easier now-a-days to project withdrawal into the country than to
accomplish it unless one commanded unusual power and wealth--and all
those who commanded these things had long since gone. The wholesale
flight from London that had taken place since she was stricken down
had been checked at last by two factors. There was no country town or
village for many and many a mile that would receive fugitives from
London, out of dread of the infection which these might carry. To repel
them the inhabitants of rural districts had even had recourse to arms,
until, partly because of this and to avoid disturbances and bloodshed,
partly as an heroic measure against the spread of the plague throughout
England, the Lord Mayor had been constrained to suspend the issue of
certificates of health, without which no man could depart from London.
Those who still remained in the infected area--where the plague was
taking now a weekly toll of thousands of lives--must abandon all hope
of quitting it until the pestilence should have subsided.
Considering now her case and weighing what she had told him, Dr.
Beamish perceived that her need of him was far from being at an end.
Practical and spiritual assistance might be as necessary to her
presently as had lately been his physician’s ministrations.
“Come,” he said abruptly, “I will go with you to your lodging, and see
you safely bestowed there--that is, if you permit it.”
“Permit it? Oh, my friend!” She held out her hand to him. “Shall I
permit you to do me this last kindness? I shall be more grateful than
ever I could hope to tell you.”
He smiled through his owlish spectacles, and in silence patted the
little hand he held; then he made shift to lead her forward to her
chair.
But a duty yet remained her. In the shadows of the hall behind lingered
still the kindly Mrs. Dallows, almost tearful at this parting from
the sweet charge for whom she had conceived so great a kindness. Miss
Sylvester ran back to her.
“Keep this in memory of one who will never forget her debt to you and
never cease to think of you fondly.” Into her hand she pressed a clasp
of brilliants that she had taken from her bodice--a thing of price far
beyond the gold that Holles had left behind in payment for the nurse’s
services. Then, as Mrs. Dallows began at one and the same time to thank
her and to protest against this excessive munificence, Nancy took the
kindly woman in her arms and kissed her. Both were in tears when Nancy
turned away and ran out to the waiting sedan.
The bearers--the watchman, and the fellow he had fetched to assist
him--took up the chair and swung away towards Paul’s Chains. The little
black figure of the doctor strutted beside it, swinging the long red
wand that did him the office of a cane, whilst Mrs. Dallows, standing
at the door of the house in Knight Ryder Street, watched it out of
sight through a blur of tears.
And within the chair Miss Sylvester, too, was giving way at last to
tears. They were the first she had shed since she had received the
Colonel’s letter, which letter was the only thing she carried away
with her from that ill-starred house. Lost thus to consciousness of
her surroundings, she took no heed of the emptiness and silence of the
streets, and of the general air of furtiveness and desolation that hung
about the few wayfarers upon whom they chanced and that marked the very
houses they were passing.
Thus at last they came to Salisbury Court and to the house that Nancy
had indicated. And here at once Dr. Beamish saw that his worst fears
were realized.
Its door hung wide, and the dust lay thick upon the window-panes,
two of which were broken. Miss Sylvester, having alighted from her
chair, stood looking up, arrested by the unusual aspect of the place,
and chilled by a nameless dismay. In awe-stricken wonder, she looked
round the court, utterly untenanted, and presenting everywhere the
same forsaken aspect. From behind a dusty window of a house across the
way, whose door was marked and locked and guarded, an aged yellow face
revealed itself, and a pair of eyes that seemed malignant in their
furtiveness were watching her. Beyond that ill-omened visage there was
in all the court no single sign of life.
“What does it mean?” she asked the doctor.
Sadly he shook his head. “Can you not guess? Here as elsewhere the
plague and the fear of the plague have been busy in your absence.” He
sighed, and added abruptly: “Let us go in.”
They entered the gloomy vestibule, where dried leaves swept thither by
the winds crackled under their feet, and thence they began the ascent
of a narrow staircase on the baluster of which there was a mantle of
dust. Miss Sylvester called out once or twice as they advanced. But
there was no answer to those calls other than the hollow echoes they
awoke in that untenanted house.
The three rooms that had composed her home were situated on the first
floor, and as they ascended to the landing they saw the three doors
standing open. Two of the chambers were shuttered, and, therefore, in
darkness; but the drawing-room, which directly faced the stair-head,
was all in sunlight, and even before they entered it they had a
picture of the devastation wrought there. The furniture was not merely
disarranged; it was rudely tumbled, some of it broken, and some was
missing altogether. Drawers hung open, as they had been pulled by
thieving hands, and that part of their contents which had not been
considered worth removing now strewed the floor. A glass cabinet
which had stood in one angle lay tumbled forward and shattered into
fragments. The _secrétaire_ stood open, its lock broken, its contents
rifled, a litter of papers tossed upon and about it. The curtains,
torn from their poles--one of which hung broken across a window--had
disappeared, as had an Eastern rug that had covered a portion of the
floor.
Dr. Beamish and the lady stood in silence just within the doorway for
a long moment, contemplating that dreadful havoc. Then Miss Sylvester
moved swiftly forward to the _secrétaire_, in an inner drawer of
which she had left a considerable sum of money--representing most of
her immediate resources. That inner drawer had been wrenched open; the
money was gone.
She turned and looked at Dr. Beamish, her face piteous in its white
dismay. She tried to speak, but her lip trembled, and her eyes filled
again with tears. To have endured so much, and to come home to this!
The doctor started forward in answer to the pitiful appeal of that
glance. He advanced a chair that happened to be whole, and urged her
to sit down and rest, as if the rest she needed were merely physical.
She obeyed him, and with hands folded in her lap she sat there looking
helplessly around upon the wreckage of her home.
“What am I to do? Where am I to turn?” she asked, and almost at once
supplied the answer: “I had better go from this accursed place at once.
I have an old aunt living in Charmouth. I will return to her.”
She had also, she added, certain moneys in the hands of a banker near
Charing Cross. Once she should have withdrawn these there would be
nothing to keep her in London. She rose on the announcement as if there
and then to act upon it. But the doctor gently restrained her, gently
revealed to her the full helplessness of her position which was more
overwhelming even than she supposed.
It must be almost certain that the banker she named would temporarily
have suspended business and withdrawn himself from a place in which
panic and confusion had made an end of commerce for the present. But
even if he should still be at his counting-house and able at once to
supply her demands, such a journey into the country as she contemplated
was almost utterly impossible. True, the accident of her having had the
plague had supplied her with a certificate of health, and in view of
this no one could hinder her departure. But, considering whence she
came, it would be with difficulty that out of London she would find any
one to give her shelter; most likely, indeed, that she would be driven
back by sheer necessity if not by force before she had gone farther
than a day’s journey.
The realization of this unsuspected thing, that she was doomed to
imprisonment in this dreadful city which seemed abandoned alike by God
and man, inhabited only by the unfortunate and the unclean, a city of
dead and dying, drove her almost to the uttermost limits of despair.
For a while she was half stunned and silent. Then speech came from her
wild and frantic.
“What then? What then remains? What am I to do? How live? O God, if
only I had perished of the plague! I see now ... I see that the worst
wrong Randal Holles ever did me was when he saved my miserable life.”
“Hush, hush! What are you saying, child?” The doctor set a comforting
arm about her shoulders. “You are not utterly alone,” he assured her
gently. “I am still here, to serve you, my dear, and I am your friend.”
“Forgive me,” she begged him.
He patted her shoulder. “I understand. I understand. It is very hard
for you, I know. But you must have courage. While we have health and
strength, no ill of life is beyond repair. I am old, my dear; and I
know. Let us consider now your case.”
“My friend, it is beyond considerations. Who can help me now?”
“I can, for one; that is my intention.”
“But in what way?”
“Why, in several ways at need. But first I can show you how you may
help yourself.”
“Help myself?” She looked up at him, frowning a little in her
mystification.
“It is in helping others that we best help ourselves,” he explained.
“Who labours but for himself achieves a barren life, is like the
unfaithful steward with his talents. Happiness lies in labouring for
your neighbour. It is a twofold happiness. For it brings its own reward
in the satisfaction of achievement, in the joy of accomplishment;
and it brings another in that, bending our thoughts to the needs and
afflictions of our fellows, it removes them from the contemplation of
the afflictions that are our own.”
“Yes, yes. But how does it lie in my power now to do this?”
“In several ways, my dear. I will tell you of one. By God’s mercy and
the loving heroism of a fellow-creature you have been cured of the
plague, and by that cure you have been rendered what is commonly known
as a ‘safe woman’--a person immune from infection who may move without
fear among those who suffer from the pestilence. Nurse-keepers are
very difficult to find, and daily their diminishing numbers grow less
equal to the ever-increasing work that this sad visitation provides.
Many of them are noble, self-sacrificing women who, without even such
guarantees of immunity as you now possess, go heroically among the
sufferers, and some of these--alas!--are constantly succumbing.” He
paused, peering at her shortsightedly through his spectacles.
She looked up at him in round-eyed amusement.
“And you are suggesting that I....” She broke off, a little appalled by
the prospect opened out to her.
“You might do it because you conceive it to be a debt you owe to God
and your fellow-creatures for your own preservation. Or you might do it
so that, in seeking to heal the afflictions of others, you may succeed
in healing your own. But, however you did it, it would be a noble act,
and would surely not go unrewarded.”
She rose slowly, her brows bent in thought. Then she uttered a little
laugh of self-pity. “And unless I do that, what else, indeed, am I to
do?” she asked.
“Nay, nay,” he made haste to reassure her. “I do not wish to force you
into any course against your will. If the task is repugnant to you--and
I can well understand that it might be--do not imagine that I shall on
that account forsake you. I will not leave you helpless and alone. Be
sure of that.”
She looked at him, and smiled a little.
“It is repugnant, of course,” she confessed frankly. “How should it
be otherwise? I have lived soft and self-indulgently from childhood.
Therefore, if I do this thing, perhaps it will on that account be more
acceptable in the eyes of Heaven. As you say, it is a debt I owe.” She
put out a hand and took his arm. “I am ready, my friend, to set about
discharging it.”