The Plague, Pestilence & Apocalypse MEGAPACK™

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

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  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

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  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

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  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 .

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  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

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  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

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  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

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  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;