Everett-Green Evelyn
The Sign of the Red Cross: A Tale of Old London
CHAPTER VIII. IN THE DOOMED CITY
The clocks in the church steeples were chiming the hour of ten as Dinah and her two companions started forth a second time upon their errand of mercy and charity. It was an hour at which in ordinary times all the city should be alive, the streets filled with passersby, wagons lumbering along with heavy freights, fine folks in their coaches or on horseback picking their way from place to place, and shopmen or their apprentices crying their wares from open doorways.
Now the streets were almost empty. The shops were almost all shut up. Here and there an open bake house was to be seen, orders having been issued that these places were to remain available for the public, come what might; and women or trembling servant maids were to be seen going to and fro with their loads of bread or dough for baking.
But each person looked askance at the other. Neighbours were afraid to pause to exchange greetings, and hurried away from all contact with one another; and children breaking away from their mothers' sides were speedily called back, and chidden for their temerity.
Some of the churches stood wide open, and persons were seen to hurry in, lock themselves for a few minutes into separate pews, and pour out their souls in supplication. Often the sound of lamentation and weeping was heard to issue from these buildings. At certain hours of the day such of the clergy as were not scared away through fear of infection, or who were not otherwise occupied amongst the sick, would come in and address the persons gathered there, or read the daily office of prayer; but although at first these services had been well attended-people flocking to the churches as though to take sanctuary there-the widely-increased mortality and the fearful spread of the distemper had caused a panic throughout the city. The magistrates had issued warnings against the assembling of persons together in the same building, and the congregations were themselves so wasted and decimated by death and disease that each week saw fewer and fewer able to attend.
From every steeple in the city the bells tolled ceaselessly for the dead. But it was already whispered that soon they would toll no more, for the deaths were becoming past all count, and there might likely enough be soon no one left to toll.
At one open place through which Dinah led her companions, a tall man, strangely habited, and with a great mass of untrimmed hair and beard, was addressing a wild harangue to a ring of breathless listeners. In vivid and graphic words he was summing up the wickedness and perversity of the city, and telling how that the wrath of God had descended upon it, and that He would no longer stay His hand. The day of mercy had gone by; the day of vengeance had come-the day of reckoning and of punishment. The innocent must now perish with the guilty, and he warned each one of his hearers to prepare to meet his Judge.
The man was gazing up overhead with eyes that seemed ready to start from their sockets. Every face in the crowd grew pale with horror. The man seemed rooted to the spot with a ghastly terror. They followed the direction of his gaze, but could see nothing save the quivering sunshine above them.
Suddenly one in the crowd gave a shriek which those who heard it never forgot, and fell to the ground like one dead.
With a wild, terrible laugh the preacher gathered up his long gown and fled onwards, and the crowd scattered helter skelter, terrified and desperate. None seemed to have a thought for the miserable man smitten down before their very eyes. All took care to avoid approaching him in their hasty flight. He lay with his face upturned to the steely, pitiless summer sky. A woman coming furtively along with a market basket upon her arm suddenly set up a dolorous cry at sight of him, and setting down her basket ran towards him, the tears streaming down her face.
"Why, it is none other than good John Harwood and his wife Elizabeth!" cried Janet, making a forward step. "Oh, poor creatures, poor creatures! Good aunt, prithee let us do what we can for their relief. I knew not the man, his face was so changed, but I know him now. They are very honest, good folks, and have worked for us ere now. They live hard by, if so be they have not changed their lodgings. Can we do nothing to help them?"
"We will do what we can," said Dinah. "Remember, my children, all that I have bidden you do when approaching a stricken person. Be not rash, neither be over-much affrighted. The Lord has preserved me, and methinks He will preserve you, too."
With that she stepped forward and laid a hand upon the shoulder of the poor woman, who was weeping copiously over her husband, and calling him by every name she could think of, though he lay rigid with half-open eyes and heeded her not.
"Good friend," said Dinah, in her quiet, commanding fashion, "it is of no avail thus to weep and cry. We must get your goodman within doors, and tend him there. See, there is a man with a handcart over yonder. Go call him, and bid him come to our help. We must not let your goodman lie out here in the streets in this hot sunshine."
"God bless you! God bless you!" cried the poor distracted woman, unspeakably thankful for any help at a time when neighbours and friends were wont alike to flee in terror from any stricken person. "But alas and woe is me! Tell me, is this the plague?"
"I fear so," answered Dinah, who had bent over the smitten man; "but go quickly and do as I have said. There be some amongst the sick who recover. Lose not heart at the outset, but trust in God, and do all that thou art bidden."
The woman ran quickly, and the man, who was indeed one of those forlorn creatures who, for a livelihood, were even willing to scour the streets and remove from thence those that were stricken down by death as they went their way amongst their fellows, came with her at her request, and lifting her husband into his cart, wheeled him away towards a poor alley where lay her home.
As she turned into it she looked at the three women who followed, and said:
"God have mercy upon us! I would not have you adventure yourselves here. There be but three houses in all the street where the distemper has not come, and of those, mine, which was one, must now be shut up. Lord have mercy upon us indeed, else we be all dead men!"
Dinah paused for a brief moment, and looked at her young charges.
"My children," she said, "needs must that I go where the need is so great. But bethink you a moment if ye have strength and wish to follow. I know not what sad and terrible sights we may have to encounter. Think ye that ye can bear them? Have ye the strength to go forward? If not, I would have you go back ere you have reached the contamination."
Janet looked at Gertrude, and Gertrude looked at Janet; but though there was great seriousness and awe in their faces, there was no fear. Gertrude had gone through so much already within the walls of her home that she had no fear greater than that of remaining in helpless idleness there, alone with her own thoughts and memories. As for Janet, she had much of the nature of her aunt-much of that eager, intense sympathy and compassion for the sick and suffering which has induced women in all ages to go forth in times of dire need, and risk their lives for their stricken and afflicted brethren.
So after one glance of mutual comprehension and sympathy, they both answered in one breath:
"No, we will not turn back. We will go with you. Where the need is sorest, there would we be, too."
"God bless you! God bless you for angels of mercy!" sobbed the poor woman, who heard their words, and knowing both Dinah and Janet, understood something of the situation, "for we be perishing like sheep here in this place, shut away from all, and with never a nurse to come nigh us. There be some rough fellows placed outside the houses to see that none go in or out, and perchance they do their best to find nurses; but at such a time as this it is small wonder if ofttimes none are to be found. And some they have brought are worse than none. The Lord protect us from the tender mercies of such!"
The narrow court into which they now turned was cool in comparison with the sunny street; but there was nothing refreshing in the coolness, for fumes of every sort exhaled from the houses, and at the far end there burned a fire of resinous pine logs, the smoke from which, when it rolled down the court, was almost choking.
"They say it will check the spread of the distemper to the streets beyond," said the woman, "but methinks it does as much harm as good. If the Lord help us not, we be all dead men. The cart took away a score or more of corpses last night. Pray Heaven it take not away my poor husband tonight!"
The bearer of the handcart stopped at the door indicated by the woman, and lifted the stricken man in his arms. It was one of the very few doors all down that street which did not bear the ominous red cross.
As Gertrude looked up and down the court her heart sank within her for pity. The houses were closed. Watchers lounged at the doors, drinking and smoking and jesting together, being by this time recklessly and brutally hardened to their office. They knew not from day to day when their own turn might come; but this knowledge seemed to have an evil rather than a sobering effect upon them.
The better sort of watchmen were employed, as a rule, to keep the better sort of houses. When these crowded courts and alleys were attacked, the authorities had to send whom they could rather than whom they would. Indefatigable and courageously as they worked, the magnitude of the calamity was such that it taxed their resources to the utmost; and had it not been for the bountiful supplies of money sent in by charitable people, from the king downwards, for the relief of the city in this time of dire need, thousands must have perished from actual want, as well as those who fell victims to the plague itself. Yet do as these brave and devoted men could, the sufferings of the poor at this time were terrible.
As the sound of voices was heard in the street below, windows were thrown up, and heads protruded with more or less of caution. From one of the windows thus thrown up there issued a lamentable wailing, and a woman with a white, wild face cried out in tones of passionate entreaty:
"Help! help! help! good people. Ah, if that be a nurse, let her come hither. There be five dying and two dead in the house, and none but me to tend them, and methinks I am stricken to the death!"
"Janet," said Dinah, with a searching glance at her niece, "methinks I must needs answer that cry. Go with this good woman, and do what thou canst for her husband. Thou dost know what is best to be done. I will come to thee anon; but thou wilt not fear to be thus left? There is but one sick in this house. The need is sorer elsewhere."
"Go, I will do my best. At least I can make a poultice, and see that he is put to bed. I have medicaments in my bag. I would not hinder thee. Sure there is work for all in this terrible place!"
"And this is only one of many scattered throughout the city!" breathed Gertrude softly, her heart swelling within her.
Ever since she had halted before this house she had been aware of the sound of plaintive weeping and wailing proceeding from the adjoining tenement; and as Dinah moved away towards the door opposite, she asked Elizabeth Harwood what the sound meant, and if there was trouble in the next house.
"Trouble? – trouble and death everywhere!" was the answer. "The man was taken away in the cart yesternight. God alone knows who is alive in the house now. There be seven little children there with their mother, but which of them be living and which dead by now no one knows. I have heard nothing of the woman's voice these many hours. Pray Heaven she be not dead-and the little helpless children all alone with the dead corpse!"
"Oh, surely that could not be!" cried Gertrude. "Surely the watchman would go to them! Oh, that must not be! I will go and speak with him. He would not leave them to perish so!"
The woman shook her head, and hurried up the stairs whither her husband had been carried. Her heart was too full of her own anxious misery to have room for more than a passing sympathy for the needs and troubles of others.
But Gertrude could not rest. She neither followed Janet into this house nor her aunt across the street. She went to the door of the next house, upon which the red cross had been painted; and seeing her so stand before it, a man detached himself from a group hard by and asked her business, since the house was closed.
"I am a nurse," answered Gertrude, boldly. "I have come to nurse the sick. Let me into this house, I pray, for I hear the need is very sore."
"Sore enough, mistress," answered the man, fumbling with his key, for of course there was admittance to plague nurses and doctors into infected houses; "but if you take my advice, you'll not venture within the door. The dead cart has had four from it these last two days. Like enough by this time they are all dead. They have asked for nothing these past ten hours-not since the cart came last night."
With a shudder of pity and horror, but without any personal shrinking, Gertrude signed to the man to open the door, which he proceeded to do in a leisurely manner. Then she stepped across the threshold, the door was closed behind her, and she heard the key turn in the lock.
Truly her work had now begun. She was incarcerated in a plague-stricken house, and this time by her own will.
For the first few seconds she stood still in the dark entry, unable to see her way before her; but soon her eyes grew used to the dim light, and she saw that there was a door on one side of the passage and a steep flight of stairs leading upwards, and it was from some upper portion of the house from which the sound of crying proceeded.
Just glancing into the lower room, which she found quite empty, and which was unexpectedly clean, she mounted the rickety staircase, the wailing sound growing more distinct every step she took. The house was a very tiny one even for these small tenements, and there were only two little rooms upon the upper floor. It was from one of these that the crying was proceeding, but Gertrude could not be sure which.
With a beating heart she opened the first door, and saw a sight which went to her heart. Upon a narrow bed lay two little forms wrapped in the same sheet, rigidly still, waiting their last transit to the common grave. Except for the two dead children the room was empty, and Gertrude, softly closing the door, and breathing a silent prayer, she scarce knew whether for herself, for the living, or for the dead, she opened the other, and came upon a scene, the pathos and inexpressible sadness of which made a lasting impression upon her, which even after events did not efface from her memory.
There was a bed in this room too, and upon it lay the emaciated form of a woman; asleep, as the girl first thought-dead, as she afterwards quickly discovered. By her side there nestled a little child, hardly more than an infant, wailing pitifully with that plaintive, persistent cry which had attracted her attention at the outset. Three children, varying in age from four to eight, sat huddled on the floor in a corner, their tear-stained faces all turned in wondering expectancy upon the newcomer. Stretched upon the floor beside the bed was another child, so still that Gertrude felt from the first that it, too, was dead, and when she lifted up the little form, she saw the dreaded death tokens upon the waxen skin.
With a prayer in her heart for grace and strength and guidance, Gertrude laid the dead child beside its dead mother-for she saw that the woman was cold and stiff in death; and then she gathered the living children round her, and taking the infant in her arms, she led them all down into the lower room, and quickly kindled the fire that was laid ready in the grate.
She found nothing of any sort in the house, and the children were crying for food; but the watchman quickly provided what was needful, being, perhaps, a little ashamed of the condition in which this household had been found.
Gertrude tended and fed and comforted the little ones, her heart overflowing with sympathy. They clung about her and fondled her as children will do those who have come to them in their hour of dire necessity; and as their hunger became appeased, and they grew confident of the kindness of their new friend, they told their pathetic tale with the unconscious graphic force of childhood.
There had been a large household only a few days before. Father, mother, two grownup sons, and one or two daughters-evidently by a former marriage. The big brothers had gone away-probably to act as bearers or watchmen-and the little ones knew nothing of them. One of the sisters had been in service, but came home suddenly, complaining of illness, sat down in a chair, and died almost before they realized she was ill. They had kept that death a secret, had obtained a certificate of some other ailment than the distemper, and for a week all had gone on quietly, when suddenly three became ill together.
Numbers of houses were shut up all round them. Theirs was reported and closed. For a few days there had been hope. Then the father sickened, and all the grownup persons had died almost together, save the mother, and had been taken away the night before last.
What had happened since was dim and confused to the children. Their mother had seemed like one stunned-had hardly noticed them, or attended to their wants. Then two of them had been taken away into the other room. They had heard their mother weeping aloud for a while, but she would not let them in to her. By and by she had come back to them, and had taken the baby in her arms and lain down upon the bed. She had never moved after that-not even when little Harry had called to her, and had lain crying and moaning on the floor. The children thought she was asleep, and by and by Harry had gone to sleep too. They had slept together on the floor, huddled together in helpless misery and confusion of mind, until awakened by the ceaseless wailing of the baby, which never roused their mother. They were too much bewildered and weakened to make any attempt to call for help, and were just waiting for what would happen, when Gertrude had come amongst them like an angel of mercy.
Her tears fell fast as the story was told, but the children had shed all theirs. They were comforted now, feeling as though something good had happened, and they crept about her and clung round her, begging her not to leave them.
Nor had she any wish to do so. It seemed to her as though this must surely be her place for the present-amongst these helpless little ones to whom Providence had sent her in the hour of their extreme necessity.
The baby was sleeping in her arms. She looked down into its tiny face, and wondered if it would be possible that its life could be saved. For a whole night it had lain at its dead mother's side. Could it have escaped the contagion? The three older children appeared well, and even grew merry as the hours wore slowly away.
From time to time Gertrude looked out into the street, but there was nothing to be seen save the men on guard; and only from time to time was the silence broken by the cry of some delirious patient, or a shriek for mercy from some half-demented woman driven frantic by the terrors by which she was surrounded.
When afternoon came, she prepared more food for the children, and partook of it with them, and wondered how and where she should spend the night. The infant in her arms had grown strangely still and quiet. It could not be roused, and breathed slowly and heavily.
"Harry looked just like that before he went to sleep," said the eldest of the children, coming and peeping into the small waxen face; and Gertrude gave a little involuntary shiver as she thought of the four still forms lying sleeping upstairs, and wondered whether this would make a fifth for the bearers to carry forth at night.
Just as the dusk began to fall, there came the sound of a slight parley without. Then the key turned in the house door, and the next minute, to Gertrude's unspeakable relief, Dinah entered the room.
"My poor child, did you think I was never coming to you?"
"I did not know if you could," answered Gertrude. "Oh, tell me, what must I do for all these little ones-and for the baby? Is he dying too? It is so long since he has moved. I am afraid to look at him lest I disturb him, but-but-"
Dinah bent over the little form, and lifted it gently from Gertrude's arms.
"Poor little lamb, its troubles are all over," she said, after a few moments. "The little ones often go like that-quite peacefully and quietly. It has not suffered at all. It has been a gentle and merciful release. You need not weep for it, my child."
"I think my tears are for the living rather than for the dead," answered Gertrude, with brimming eyes. "There are but three left out of seven living yesterday, and what is to become of them?"
"We must report their case to the authorities. There are numbers of poor children left thus orphaned, and it is hard to know what will become of them. I will send at once to my brother-in-law, and report the matter to him. He will know what it were best to do. Meantime I shall remain here with you. Janet is busy next door. Her patient is mending, and none besides in the house is sick. But oh, the things I have seen and heard this day! There is not one living now in the house to which I went first, and I have seen ten men and women die since I saw you last.
"God alone knows how it is to end. It seems as though His hand were outstretched, and as though the whole city were doomed!"
