by Robert Reed
take the protectorship, say I, if it expose me to danger!”
“Faint-hearted man!” cried Adrian indignantly—“Your country-
men put their trust in you, and you betray them!”
“I betray them!” said Ryland, “the plague betrays me . Faint-
hearted! It is well, shut up in your castle, out of danger, to boast
yourself out of fear . Take the Protectorship who will; before God I
renounce it!”
“And before God,” replied his opponent, fervently, “do I receive
it! No one will canvass for this honour now—none envy my danger
or labours . Deposit your powers in my hands . Long have I fought
with death, and much” (he stretched out his thin hand) “much have I
suffered in the struggle. It is not by flying, but by facing the enemy,
that we can conquer . If my last combat is now about to be fought,
and I am to be worsted—so let it be!”
“But come, Ryland, recollect yourself! Men have hitherto thought
you magnanimous and wise, will you cast aside these titles? Consid-
er the panic your departure will occasion . Return to London . I will
go with you . Encourage the people by your presence . I will incur
all the danger. Shame! shame! if the first magistrate of England be
foremost to renounce his duties .”
Meanwhile among our guests in the park, all thoughts of fes-
tivity had faded. As summer-flies are scattered by rain, so did this
congregation, late noisy and happy, in sadness and melancholy
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1050
murmurs break up, dwindling away apace . With the set sun and
the deepening twilight the park became nearly empty . Adrian and
Ryland were still in earnest discussion . We had prepared a banquet
for our guests in the lower hall of the castle; and thither Idris and
I repaired to receive and entertain the few that remained . There is
nothing more melancholy than a merry-meeting thus turned to sor-
row: the gala dresses—the decorations, gay as they might otherwise
be, receive a solemn and funereal appearance . If such change be
painful from lighter causes, it weighed with intolerable heaviness
from the knowledge that the earth’s desolator had at last, even as
an arch-fiend, lightly over-leaped the boundaries our precautions
raised, and at once enthroned himself in the full and beating heart
of our country . Idris sat at the top of the half-empty hall . Pale and
tearful, she almost forgot her duties as hostess; her eyes were fixed
on her children . Alfred’s serious air shewed that he still revolved the
tragic story related by the Italian boy . Evelyn was the only mirthful
creature present: he sat on Clara’s lap; and, making matter of glee
from his own fancies, laughed aloud . The vaulted roof echoed again
his infant tone . The poor mother who had brooded long over, and
suppressed the expression of her anguish, now burst into tears, and
folding her babe in her arms, hurried from the hall . Clara and Al-
fred followed . While the rest of the company, in confused murmur,
which grew louder and louder, gave voice to their many fears .
The younger part gathered round me to ask my advice; and those
who had friends in London were anxious beyond the rest, to ascertain
the present extent of disease in the metropolis . I encouraged them
with such thoughts of cheer as presented themselves . I told them
exceedingly few deaths had yet been occasioned by pestilence, and
gave them hopes, as we were the last visited, so the calamity might
have lost its most venomous power before it had reached us . The
cleanliness, habits of order, and the manner in which our cities were
built, were all in our favour . As it was an epidemic, its chief force
was derived from pernicious qualities in the air, and it would prob-
ably do little harm where this was naturally salubrious. At first, I had
spoken only to those nearest me; but the whole assembly gathered
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1051
about me, and I found that I was listened to by all . “My friends,” I
said, “our risk is common; our precautions and exertions shall be
common also . If manly courage and resistance can save us, we will
be saved. We will fight the enemy to the last. Plague shall not find us
a ready prey; we will dispute every inch of ground; and, by methodi-
cal and inflexible laws, pile invincible barriers to the progress of our
foe . Perhaps in no part of the world has she met with so systematic
and determined an opposition . Perhaps no country is naturally so
well protected against our invader; nor has nature anywhere been so
well assisted by the hand of man . We will not despair . We are neither
cowards nor fatalists; but, believing that God has placed the means
for our preservation in our own hands, we will use those means to
our utmost . Remember that cleanliness, sobriety, and even good-
humour and benevolence, are our best medicines .”
There was little I could add to this general exhortation; for the
plague, though in London, was not among us . I dismissed the guests
therefore; and they went thoughtful, more than sad, to await the
events in store for them .
I now sought Adrian, anxious to hear the result of his discussion
with Ryland . He had in part prevailed; the Lord Protector consented
to return to London for a few weeks; during which time things should
be so arranged, as to occasion less consternation at his departure .
Adrian and Idris were together . The sadness with which the former
had first heard that the plague was in London had vanished; the en-
ergy of his purpose informed his body with strength, the solemn joy
of enthusiasm and self-devotion illuminated his countenance; and
the weakness of his physical nature seemed to pass from him, as the
cloud of humanity did, in the ancient fable, from the divine lover of
Semele . He was endeavouring to encourage his sister, and to bring
her to look on his intent in a less tragic light than she was prepared
to do; and with passionate eloquence he unfolded his designs to her .
“Let me, at the first word,” he said, “relieve your mind from all
fear on my account . I will not task myself beyond my powers, nor
will I needlessly seek danger . I feel that I know what ought to be
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1052
done, and as my presence is necessary for the accomplishment of
my plans, I will take especial care to preserve my life .
“I am now going to undertake an office fitted for me. I cannot
intrigue, or work a tortuous path through the labyrinth of men’s
vices and passions; but I can bring patience, and sympathy, and such
aid as art affords, to the bed of disease; I can raise from earth the
miserable orphan, and awaken to new hopes the shut heart of the
mourner . I can enchain the plague in limits, and set a term to the
misery it would occasion; courage, forbearance, and watchfulness,
are the forces I bring towards this great work .
“O, I shall be something now! From my birth I have aspired like
the eagle —but, unlike the eagle, my wings have failed, and my
&n
bsp; vision has been blinded . Disappointment and sickness have hith-
erto held dominion over me; twin born with me, my would, was for
ever enchained by the shall not, of these my tyrants . A shepherd-boy
that tends a silly flock on the mountains, was more in the scale of
society than I. Congratulate me then that I have found fitting scope
for my powers . I have often thought of offering my services to the
pestilence-stricken towns of France and Italy; but fear of paining
you, and expectation of this catastrophe, withheld me . To England
and to Englishmen I dedicate myself . If I can save one of her mighty
spirits from the deadly shaft; if I can ward disease from one of her
smiling cottages, I shall not have lived in vain .”
Strange ambition this! Yet such was Adrian . He appeared given
up to contemplation, averse to excitement, a lowly student, a man of
visions— but afford him worthy theme, and—
Like to the lark at break of day arising,
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate.7
so did he spring up from listlessness and unproductive thought,
to the highest pitch of virtuous action .
With him went enthusiasm, the high-wrought resolve, the eye that
without blenching could look at death . With us remained sorrow,
7
Shakespeare’s Sonnets .
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1053
anxiety, and unendurable expectation of evil . The man, says Lord
Bacon, who hath wife and children, has given hostages to fortune .
Vain was all philosophical reasoning—vain all fortitude—vain, vain,
a reliance on probable good . I might heap high the scale with logic,
courage, and resignation—but let one fear for Idris and our children
enter the opposite one, and, over-weighed, it kicked the beam .
The plague was in London! Fools that we were not long ago to
have foreseen this . We wept over the ruin of the boundless conti-
nents of the east, and the desolation of the western world; while
we fancied that the little channel between our island and the rest
of the earth was to preserve us alive among the dead . It were no
mighty leap methinks from Calais to Dover . The eye easily discerns
the sister land; they were united once; and the little path that runs
between looks in a map but as a trodden footway through high grass .
Yet this small interval was to save us: the sea was to rise a wall
of adamant—without, disease and misery—within, a shelter from
evil, a nook of the garden of paradise—a particle of celestial soil,
which no evil could invade—truly we were wise in our generation,
to imagine all these things!
But we are awake now . The plague is in London; the air of Eng-
land is tainted, and her sons and daughters strew the unwholesome
earth . And now, the sea, late our defence, seems our prison bound;
hemmed in by its gulphs, we shall die like the famished inhabitants
of a besieged town . Other nations have a fellowship in death; but
we, shut out from all neighbourhood, must bury our own dead, and
little England become a wide, wide tomb .
This feeling of universal misery assumed concentration and shape,
when I looked on my wife and children; and the thought of danger to
them possessed my whole being with fear . How could I save them?
I revolved a thousand and a thousand plans . They should not die—
first I would be gathered to nothingness, ere infection should come
anear these idols of my soul . I would walk barefoot through the
world, to find an uninfected spot; I would build my home on some
wave-tossed plank, drifted about on the barren, shoreless ocean .
I would betake me with them to some wild beast’s den, where a
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1054
tyger’s cubs, which I would slay, had been reared in health . I would
seek the mountain eagle’s eirie, and live years suspended in some
inaccessible recess of a sea-bounding cliff—no labour too great, no
scheme too wild, if it promised life to them . O! ye heart-strings of
mine, could ye be torn asunder, and my soul not spend itself in tears
of blood for sorrow!
Idris, after the first shock, regained a portion of fortitude. She
studiously shut out all prospect of the future, and cradled her heart
in present blessings . She never for a moment lost sight of her chil-
dren . But while they in health sported about her, she could cherish
contentment and hope . A strange and wild restlessness came over
me—the more intolerable, because I was forced to conceal it . My
fears for Adrian were ceaseless; August had come; and the symp-
toms of plague encreased rapidly in London . It was deserted by all
who possessed the power of removing; and he, the brother of my
soul, was exposed to the perils from which all but slaves enchained
by circumstance fled. He remained to combat the fiend—his side un-
guarded, his toils unshared—infection might even reach him, and he
die unattended and alone . By day and night these thoughts pursued
me . I resolved to visit London, to see him; to quiet these agonizing
throes by the sweet medicine of hope, or the opiate of despair .
It was not until I arrived at Brentford, that I perceived much
change in the face of the country . The better sort of houses were shut
up; the busy trade of the town palsied; there was an air of anxiety
among the few passengers I met, and they looked wonderingly at
my carriage—the first they had seen pass towards London, since
pestilence sat on its high places, and possessed its busy streets . I
met several funerals; they were slenderly attended by mourners, and
were regarded by the spectators as omens of direst import . Some
gazed on these processions with wild eagerness— others fled tim-
idly—some wept aloud .
Adrian’s chief endeavour, after the immediate succour of the
sick, had been to disguise the symptoms and progress of the plague
from the inhabitants of London . He knew that fear and melancholy
forebodings were powerful assistants to disease; that desponding
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1055
and brooding care rendered the physical nature of man peculiarly
susceptible of infection . No unseemly sights were therefore discern-
ible: the shops were in general open, the concourse of passengers
in some degree kept up . But although the appearance of an infected
town was avoided, to me, who had not beheld it since the com-
mencement of the visitation, London appeared sufficiently changed.
There were no carriages, and grass had sprung high in the streets;
the houses had a desolate look; most of the shutters were closed;
and there was a ghast and frightened stare in the persons I met, very
different from the usual business-like demeanour of the Londoners .
My solitary carriage attracted notice, as it rattled along towards the
Protectoral Palace—and the fashionable streets leading to it wore
a still more dreary and deserted appearance . I found Adrian’s anti-
chamber crowded—it was his hour for giving audience . I was un-
willing to disturb his labours, and waited, watchin
g the ingress and
egress of the petitioners . They consisted of people of the middling
and lower classes of society, whose means of subsistence failed with
the cessation of trade, and of the busy spirit of money-making in all
its branches, peculiar to our country . There was an air of anxiety,
sometimes of terror in the new-comers, strongly contrasted with the
resigned and even satisfied mien of those who had had audience. I
could read the influence of my friend in their quickened motions and
cheerful faces . Two o’clock struck, after which none were admitted;
those who had been disappointed went sullenly or sorrowfully away,
while I entered the audience-chamber .
I was struck by the improvement that appeared in the health of
Adrian . He was no longer bent to the ground, like an over-nursed
flower of spring, that, shooting up beyond its strength, is weighed
down even by its own coronal of blossoms . His eyes were bright, his
countenance composed, an air of concentrated energy was diffused
over his whole person, much unlike its former languor . He sat at a
table with several secretaries, who were arranging petitions, or reg-
istering the notes made during that day’s audience . Two or three pe-
titioners were still in attendance . I admired his justice and patience .
Those who possessed a power of living out of London, he advised
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1056
immediately to quit it, affording them the means of so doing . Others,
whose trade was beneficial to the city, or who possessed no other
refuge, he provided with advice for better avoiding the epidemic;
relieving overloaded families, supplying the gaps made in others by
death. Order, comfort, and even health, rose under his influence, as
from the touch of a magician’s wand .
“I am glad you are come,” he said to me, when we were at last
alone; “I can only spare a few minutes, and must tell you much in
that time . The plague is now in progress—it is useless closing one’s
eyes to the fact—the deaths encrease each week . What will come I
cannot guess . As yet, thank God, I am equal to the government of
the town; and I look only to the present . Ryland, whom I have so
long detained, has stipulated that I shall suffer him to depart before
the end of this month . The deputy appointed by parliament is dead;