The Sign of the Red Cross: A Tale of Old London

  CHAPTER XII. EXCITING DISCOVERIES.

  Joseph and Benjamin found themselves exceedingly happy andexceedingly well occupied in their aunt's pleasant cottage. Theyrose every morning with the lark, and spent an hour in settingeverything to rights in the house, and sweeping out every room withscrupulous care, as their mother had taught them to do at home,believing that perfect cleanliness was one of the greatestsafeguards against infection. Hot and close though the weatherremained, the air out in these open country places seemed deliciousto the boys, and the freedom to run out every moment into the openfields was in itself a privilege which could only be appreciated bythose who had been long confined within walls.

  Sometimes they were alone in the house with their aunt. Sometimesthe cottage harboured guests of various degrees--travellers fleeingfrom the doomed city in terror of the fearful mortality there, orpoor unfortunates turned away from their own abodes because theywere suspected of having been in contact with the sick, and wererefused admittance again. Servant maids were often put in thismelancholy plight. They would be sent upon errands by theiremployers to the bake house or some other place; and perhaps erethey were admitted again they would be closely questioned as towhat they had seen or heard. Sometimes having terrible and dolefultales to tell of having seen persons fall down in the agonies ofdeath almost at their feet, terror would seize hold upon theinmates of the house, who would refuse to open the door to one whomight by this time be herself infected. And when this was the case,the forlorn creature was forced to wander away, and generally triedto find her way out of the city and into the country beyond. Manysuch unlucky wights, having no passes, were turned back by theguardians of the road; but some succeeded in evading these men, orelse in persuading them, and many such unfortunates had found restand help and shelter beneath Mary Harmer's charitable roof.

  September was now come, but as yet there was no abatement of thepestilence raging in the city. Indeed the accounts coming in of thevirulence of the plague seemed worse than ever. Ten thousand deathswere returned in the weekly bill for the first week alone, andthose who knew the state of the city were of opinion that not morethan two-thirds of the deaths were ever really reported to theauthorities. Hitherto the carts had never gone about save by night,and for all that was rumoured by those who loved to make the worstof so terrible a calamity, it was seldom that a corpse lay about inthe streets for above a short while, just until notice of itspresence there was given to the authorities.

  But now it seemed as though nothing could cope with the fearfulincrease of the mortality. The carts were forced to work by day aswell as by night; and so virulent was now the pestilence that thebearers and buriers who had hitherto escaped, or had recovered ofthe malady and thought themselves safe, died in great numbers. Sothat there were tales of carts overthrown in the streets by reasonof the drivers of them falling dead upon their load, or ofdriverless horses going of their own accord to the pits with theirload.

  These terrible tales were reported to Mary Harmer and her nephewsby the fugitives who sought refuge with her at this time. And verythankful did the lads feel to be free of the city and its terrors,albeit they never forgot to offer up earnest prayer for theirfather and mother and all their dear ones who were dwelling in themidst of so much peril. There was no hope of hearing news of them,save by hazard, whilst things were like this; but they trusted thatthe precautions taken, and hitherto successfully, would avert thepestilence from their dwelling, and for the rest the boys were toowell employed to have time for brooding.

  When their daily work at home was done, there were always errandsof mercy to be performed to neighbours who had had sickness athome, or to the persons encamped in the fields, who were verythankful of any little presents of vegetables or eggs or othernecessaries; whilst others of larger means were glad to buy fromthose who came to sell, and gave good money for the accommodation.

  Mary Harmer had a large and productive garden and a large stock ofpoultry, so that she was able both to sell and to give largely; andthe boys thought that working in the garden and looking after thefowls was the best sort of fun possible. They were exceedinglyuseful to her, and she kept them out of danger without fretting orcurbing their eager spirit of usefulness. Of course, no person inthose days could act with unselfish charity and not adventuresomething; but she took all reasonable precautions, and, like herbrother, trusted the rest to Providence. And she believed that theboys were safer with her, even though not so closely restrained,than they would have been had they remained in the infected city,where the people now seemed to be dying like stricken sheep.

  But the spirit of curiosity and love of adventure were not deadwithin the hearts of the boys; and although for some weeks theywere fully contented in performing the duties set them by theiraunt, there were moments when a strong curiosity would come overthem for some greater sensation, and this it was which led them toan act of disobedience destined to be fraught with importantconsequences, as will soon be seen.

  Mary Harmer's house was empty again, and she had promised to sit upfor a night with a sick woman who lived some two miles off, and whohad entreated her to come and see her. This was no case of plague,but fear of the infection had become so strong by this time thatthe sick were often rather harshly treated, and sometimes almostentirely neglected, by those about them. Mary Harmer had heard thatthis poor creature had been left alone by her son's wife, who hadtaken away her children and refused to go near her. Mary knew thather presence there for a while, and her assurances as to the natureof the malady, would be most likely to bring the woman to reason,so she decided to go and remain for one whole night, and she lefther own cottage in the charge of the boys, bidding them take careof everything, and expect her back again on the followingafternoon.

  They were quite happy all that evening, seeing to the poultry, andrunning races with Fido in the leafy lane. They liked theimportance of the charge of the house, although they missed thegentle presence of their aunt. They shut up the house at dark, andprepared their simple supper, and whilst they were eating it,Benjamin said:

  "What shall we do tomorrow when we have finished our work?"

  "I know what I should like to do," said Joseph promptly.

  "What, brother?" asked Benjamin eagerly.

  "Marry, what I want to do is to go and see that farm house hard byClerkenwell which they have turned into a pest house, and wherethey say they have dozens of plague-stricken people brought indaily. I have never seen a pest house. I would fain know what itlooks like. And we might get more news there of the truth of thosethings that they say about the plague in the city. Ben, what sayestthou?"

  Ben's eyes were round with wonder and excitement. The boys had allthe careless daring and eager curiosity which belong to boy nature.They were by this time so much habituated to living underconditions of risk and a certain amount of peril, that a littlemore or a little less did not now seem greatly to matter.

  "Would our good aunt approve?" asked the younger boy.

  "I trow not," answered Joseph frankly; "women are always timid, andshe would say, perchance, that unless duty called us it werefoolish to adventure ourselves into danger. But I would fain seethis place, Ben, boy. If in time to come we live to be men, andfolks ask us of these days of peril and sickness, I should like tohave seen all that may be seen of these great things. Our fatherwent many times to the pest houses within the city and came away noworse. Why should thou or I suffer? We have our vinegar bottles andour decoctions, and methinks we know enough now not to run needlessrisks."

  Benjamin was almost as eager and curious as his brother. The spiritof adventure soon gets into the hearts of boys and runs riot there.Before they went to bed they had fully decided to make theexcursion; and they rose earlier next morning so as to get alltheir work done while it was yet scarce light, so that they mightstart for their destination before the heat of the day came on.

  It was pleasant walking through the dewy fields, and hard indeedwas it to imagine that death and misery lurked anywhere in theneigh
bourhood of what was so smiling and gay. The boys knew whatpaths to take, nor was the distance very great. Benjamin on hisformer visit to his aunt had spent a day with the good people atthis very farm house. Now, alas, all had been swept away, and theplace had been taken possession of for the time being by theauthorities, to be used as a supplementary pest house, where thehomeless sick could be temporarily housed. Generally it was but fora few hours or a couple of days that such shelter was needed. Thegreat common grave, barely a quarter of a mile away, received dayby day the great majority of the unfortunate ones who were broughtin.

  In all London proper there were only two pest houses used at thistime, one on some fields beyond Old Street, and the other inWestminster; but as the virulence of the distemper increased, andthe suburbs became so terribly infected, and such numbers ofpersons fleeing this way and that would fall stricken by thewayside, it became necessary to find places of some sort where theycould be received, and the authorities began to take possession ofempty houses--generally farmsteads standing in a convenient butisolated position--and to use them for this melancholy purpose. Itcould not be expected that even the most charitable would receiveplague-stricken wayfarers into their own families, nor would such athing be right. Yet they could not remain by the wayside to die andinfect the air. So they were removed by the bearers appointed tothat gruesome work to these smaller pest houses, and only too oftenfrom thence to the pit in the course of a few hours.

  "How pretty it all looks!" said Benjamin, as they approached theplace. "See, Joseph, those are the great elm trees where the rooksbuild, and which I used to climb. When they cut the hay, I cameoften and rolled about in it and played with the boys from thefarm. To think that they should all be dead and gone! Alack! whatstrange times these be! It seems sometimes as though it were all adream!"

  "I would it were!" said Joseph, sobered by the thought of theirnear approach to the habitation of death. "Ben, wouldst thou ratherturn back and see no more? We have at least seen the outside of apest house. Shall that suffice us?"

  "Nay, if we have come so far, let us go further," answeredBenjamin. "We have seen naught but the tiled roof and the greengarden. Come this way. There is a little gate by which we may gainentrance to a side door. Perchance they will turn us back if weseek to enter at the front."

  The farm house looked peaceful enough nestling beneath itssheltering row of tall elms, in the midst of its wild garden, now amass of autumnal bloom. But as they neared the house the boys hearddismal sounds issuing thence--the groans of sufferers beneath thehands of the physicians, who were often driven to use what seemedcruel measures to cause the tumours to break--the only chance ofrecovery for the patient--the shriek of some maddened or deliriouspatient, or the unintelligible murmur and babble from a multitudeof sick. Moreover, they inhaled the pungent fumes of the burningdrugs and vinegar which alone made it possible to breathe theatmosphere tainted by so much pestilential sickness. The boys heldtheir own bottles of vinegar to their noses as they stole towardsthe house, feeling a mingling of strong repulsion and strongcuriosity as they approached the dismal stronghold of disease.

  Although men were in these days becoming almost reckless, and thosewho actually nursed and tended the sick were naturally lesscautious and less particular than others, yet it is probable thatthe daring boys might have been turned back had they approached thehouse by the ordinary entrance, for they certainly could notprofess to have business there. As it was, however, thanks toBenjamin's knowledge of the place, not a creature observed theirquiet approach through the orchard and along a tangled garden path.This path brought them to a door, which stood wide open in thissultry weather, in order to let a free current of air pass throughthe house, and they inhaled more strongly still the aromaticperfumes, which were not yet strong enough entirely to overcomethat other noisome odour which was one of the most fatal means ofspreading infection from plague-stricken patients.

  "We can get into the great kitchen by this door," whisperedBenjamin. "I trow they will use it for the sick; it is the biggestroom in all the house. Yonder is the door. Shall I open it?"

  Joseph gave a sign of assent, but bid his brother not speakneedlessly, and keep his handkerchief to his mouth and nose. Theyhad both steeped their handkerchiefs in vinegar, and could inhalenothing save that pungent scent.

  Burning with curiosity, yet half afraid of their own temerity, theboys stole through a half-open door into a great room lined withbeds. The sound of moans, groans, shrieks, and prayers drowned allthe noise their own entry might have made, and they stood in theshadow looking round them, quite unnoticed in the general confusionof that busy home of death.

  There were perhaps a score or more of sufferers in the great room,and two nurses moving about amongst them, quickly and in none tootender a fashion. A doctor was also there with a young man, hisassistant; and at some bedsides he paused, whilst at others he gavea shake of the head, and went by without a word. Indeed it seemedto the boys as though almost a quarter of the patients were deadmen, they lay so still and rigid, and the purple patches upon thewhite skin stood out with such terrible distinctness.

  A man suddenly put in his head from the open door at the other endand asked of anybody who could answer him:

  "Room for any more here?"

  And the doctor's assistant, looking round, replied:

  "Room for four, if you will send and have these taken away."

  Almost immediately there came in two men, who bore away fourcorpses from the place, and in five minutes more the beds were fullagain, and the nurses were calculating how soon it would bepossible to receive more, some now here being obviously in a dyingstate. The bearers reported that the outer barn was full as well asall the house; but those without invariably died, whilst a portionof those brought in recovered.

  Joseph and Benjamin had seen enough for their own curiosity. It wasa more terrible sight than they had anticipated, and they felt agreat longing to get out of this stricken den into the purer airwithout. Joseph had laid a hand on his brother's arm to draw himaway, when he was alarmed by seeing his brother's eyes fixed uponthe far corner of the room with such an extraordinary expression ofamaze and horror, that for a moment he feared he must have beensuddenly stricken by the plague and was going off into the awfuldelirium he had heard described.

  A poignant fear and remorse seized him, lest he had been the meansof bringing his brother into this peril and having caused hisattack, if indeed it were one, and he pulled him harder by the armto get him away. But with a strange choked cry Benjamin broke fromhim, and running across the room he flung himself upon his knees bythe side of a bed, crying in a lamentable voice:

  "Reuben--Reuben--Reuben!"

  It was Joseph's turn now to gaze in horror and dismay. Could thatbe Reuben--that cadaverous, death-like creature, with the lividlook of a plague patient, lying like one in a trance which can onlyend in the awakening of death? Was Benjamin dreaming? or was itreally their brother? But how could he by any possibility be here,so far away from home, so utterly beyond the limits of his owndistrict?

  The doctor had approached Benjamin and had pulled him back from thebedside quickly, though not unkindly.

  "What are you doing here, child?" he said. "Have we not enough uponour hands without having sound persons mad enough to seek to add tothe numbers of the sick? Is he a relation of yours?

  "Well, well, well, he will be looked after here better than you cando it. Your brother? Well, he has been four days here, and is oneof those I have hope for. The tumours have discharged. He issuffering now from weakness and fever; but he might get well,especially if we could move him out of this pestilential air. Gohome, children, and tell your friends that if they have a place totake him to he will not infect them now, and will have a betterchance. But you must not linger here. It may be death to you;though it is true enough that many come seeking their friends whogo away and take no hurt. No one can say who is safe and who isnot. But get you gone, get you gone. Your brother shall be welllooked to, I say. We have none so
many who recover that we canafford to let those slip back for whom there is a chance!"

  He had pushed the boys by this time into the garden, and wasspeaking to them there. He was a kind man, if blunt, and habit hadnot bred indifference in him to the sufferings of those about him.He told the boys that one of the strangest features about theplague patients was the rapid recovery they often made when oncethe poison was discharged by the breaking of the swellings, and therapidity with which the infection ceased when these broken tumourshad healed. Reuben's case had seemed desperate enough when he wasbrought in, but now he was in a fair way of recovery. If he couldbe taken to better air, he would probably be a sound man quickly.Even as he was, he might well recover.

  The boys looked at each other and said with one voice that theythought they knew of a house where he would be received, and gotleave to remove him in a cart at any time. The doctor then hurriedback to his work, whilst the brothers looked each other in theface, and Benjamin said gravely:

  "Methinks it must have been put into our hearts to go. Aunt Marywill forgive the temerity when she hears of the specialProvidence."

  Their aunt was at no great distance off, as Benjamin knew. Insteadof going home, they found their way to a brook. Pulling off theirclothes, they proceeded to drag them over the sweet-scented meadowgrass. Then they plunged into the brook, and enjoyed a delightfulpaddle and bath in the clear cool water. After rolling themselvesin the hot grass, and having a fine romp there with Fido, theydonned their garments, and felt indeed as though they had got ridof all germs of infection and disease.

  After this they made their way towards the cottage where their aunthad been staying, and met her just sallying forth to return home.

  Without any hesitation or delay Joseph told the tale of theirhardihood and disobedience, and the strange discovery to which ithad led them; and although their aunt trembled and looked pale withterror at the thought of how they had exposed themselves, she didnot stop to chide them, but was full of anxiety for the immediaterelease of Reuben from his pestilential prison, and eager to havehim to nurse in her own house, if she could do this without risk tothe younger boys.

  They were to the full as eager as she, and promised in everythingto obey her--even to the sleeping and living in an outhouse for afew days, if only she would save Reuben from that horrible pesthouse. None knew better than Mary Harmer, who was a notable nurseherself, how much might now depend upon pure air, nourishing food,and quiet; and how could her nephew receive much individual carewhen cooped up amongst scores, if not hundreds, of desperate cases?

  Mary was so much beloved by all around, that she quickly found afarmer willing to lend a cart even for the purpose of removing asick person from the pest house, if he bore the honoured name ofHarmer. She would not permit any person to accompany the cart, butdrove it herself, and sent the boys home to prepare the airiestchamber and make all such preparations as they could think ofbeforehand; and to remove their own bedding into the outhouse, tillshe was assured that they were in no peril from the presence oftheir brother indoors.

  Eagerly the boys worked at these tasks, and everything was inbeautiful order when the cart drove up. One of the attendants fromthe pest house had come with it, and he carried Reuben up to thebed made ready for him, and drove the cart away, promising todisinfect it thoroughly, and return it to the owner ere nightfall.

  It was little the eager boys saw of their aunt that day. She wasengrossed by Reuben the whole time. She said he was terribly weak,and that he had not yet got back the use of his faculties. He layin a sort of trance or stupor, and did not know where he was orwhat was happening. It came from weakness, and would pass away ashe got back his strength. The doctor had assured her that theplague symptoms had spent themselves, and that he was free from thecontagion.

  The boys slept in the shed that night tranquilly enough, and in themorning their aunt came to them with a grave and sorrowful face.

  "Is he worse?" asked Benjamin starting up.

  "Not worse, I hope, yet not better. He has some trouble on hismind, and I fear that if we cannot ease him of that he will die,"and her tears ran over, for Reuben was dear to her as a nephew, andshe knew what store her brother set by his eldest son.

  "Trouble! what trouble? Are any dead at home?" cried the boysanxiously. "Can he speak? has he talked to you? Tell us all!"

  "He has not talked with his senses awake, but he has spoken wordswhich have told me much. Death is not the trouble. He has not saidone word to make me fear that our loved ones have been taken. Thetrouble is his own. It is a trouble of the heart. It concerns onewhose name is Gertrude. Is not that the name of Master Mason'sdaughter?"

  "Why, yes, to be sure. She has joined with the rest--with Janet andRebecca--to care for the orphan children whom none know what to dowith, there are such numbers of them. Reuben always thought a greatdeal of Mistress Gertrude--and she of him. What of that?"

  "Does she think much of him?" asked Mary eagerly. "I feared she hadflouted his love!"

  "Nay, she worships the ground he treads on!" cried Joseph, who hada very sharp pair of eyes of his own, and a great liking forsweet-spoken Gertrude himself. "It was madam, her mother, whoflouted Reuben. Gertrude is of different stuff. Why, whenever shewas with us she would get me in a corner and talk of nothing buthim. I thought they would but wait for the plague to be overpast towed each other!"

  Mary stood with her hands locked together, thinking deeply.

  "Joseph," she said, "if it were a matter of saving Reuben's life,think you that Mistress Gertrude would come hither to my house andhelp me to nurse him back to health?"

  Joseph's eyes flashed with eager excitement.

  "I am certain sure she would!" he answered.

  "Ah, but how to let her know!" cried Mary, pressing her handstogether in perplexity. "Alas for days like these! How shall anyone get a letter safely delivered to her in time? It may be that ifwe tarry the fever will have swept him off. It is fever of the mindrather than the body, and it is hard to minister to the minddiseased, without the one healing medicine."

  "Hold! I have a plan," cried Joseph, whose wits were sharpened bythe pressing nature of the business in hand; "listen, and I willexpound it. Tomorrow morning I will sally forth with a barrow ladenwith eggs, vegetables, and fruit; and I will enter the city as oneof the country folks for the market, with whom none interfere atthe barriers. I will e'en sell my goods to whoever will buy them,and at the bottom of the barrow thou shalt put one of thy cottongowns and market aprons, Aunt Mary. Then will I go to MistressGertrude and tell her all. I shall learn of the welfare of those athome, and will come back with her at my side. The watch will buttake her for a market woman, and we shall both pass unchecked andunhindered. By noon tomorrow Gertrude shall be here!

  "Nay, hinder me not, good aunt. We must all adventure ourselvessomewhat in this dire distress and peril. Sure, if Providence keptme safe in yon pest house yesterday, I need not fear to return tothe city upon an errand of mercy such as may save my brother'slife!"