The Plague, Pestilence & Apocalypse MEGAPACK™

by Robert Reed

  We had longed with inexpressible earnestness to reach Dijon,

  since we had fixed on it, as a kind of station in our progress. But now

  we entered it with a torpor more painful than acute suffering . We

  had come slowly but irrevocably to the opinion, that our utmost ef-

  forts would not preserve one human being alive . We took our hands

  therefore away from the long grasped rudder; and the frail vessel on

  which we floated, seemed, the government over her suspended, to

  rush, prow foremost, into the dark abyss of the billows . A gush of

  grief, a wanton profusion of tears, and vain laments, and overflow-

  ing tenderness, and passionate but fruitless clinging to the priceless

  few that remained, was followed by languor and recklessness .

  During this disastrous journey we lost all those, not of our own

  family, to whom we had particularly attached ourselves among the

  survivors. It were not well to fill these pages with a mere catalogue

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  of losses; yet I cannot refrain from this last mention of those prin-

  cipally dear to us . The little girl whom Adrian had rescued from

  utter desertion, during our ride through London on the twentieth

  of November, died at Auxerre . The poor child had attached herself

  greatly to us; and the suddenness of her death added to our sor-

  row . In the morning we had seen her apparently in health—in the

  evening, Lucy, before we retired to rest, visited our quarters to say

  that she was dead . Poor Lucy herself only survived, till we arrived

  at Dijon . She had devoted herself throughout to the nursing the sick,

  and attending the friendless . Her excessive exertions brought on a

  slow fever, which ended in the dread disease whose approach soon

  released her from her sufferings . She had throughout been endeared

  to us by her good qualities, by her ready and cheerful execution of

  every duty, and mild acquiescence in every turn of adversity . When

  we consigned her to the tomb, we seemed at the same time to bid a

  final adieu to those peculiarly feminine virtues conspicuous in her;

  uneducated and unpretending as she was, she was distinguished for

  patience, forbearance, and sweetness . These, with all their train of

  qualities peculiarly English, would never again be revived for us .

  This type of all that was most worthy of admiration in her class

  among my countrywomen, was placed under the sod of desert

  France; and it was as a second separation from our country to have

  lost sight of her for ever .

  The Countess of Windsor died during our abode at Dijon . One

  morning I was informed that she wished to see me . Her message

  made me remember, that several days had elapsed since I had last

  seen her . Such a circumstance had often occurred during our jour-

  ney, when I remained behind to watch to their close the last mo-

  ments of some one of our hapless comrades, and the rest of the troop

  past on before me . But there was something in the manner of her

  messenger, that made me suspect that all was not right . A caprice

  of the imagination caused me to conjecture that some ill had oc-

  curred to Clara or Evelyn, rather than to this aged lady . Our fears,

  for ever on the stretch, demanded a nourishment of horror; and it

  seemed too natural an occurrence, too like past times, for the old to

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  die before the young . I found the venerable mother of my Idris lying

  on a couch, her tall emaciated figure stretched out; her face fallen

  away, from which the nose stood out in sharp profile, and her large

  dark eyes, hollow and deep, gleamed with such light as may edge

  a thunder cloud at sun-set . All was shrivelled and dried up, except

  these lights; her voice too was fearfully changed, as she spoke to me

  at intervals. “I am afraid,” said she, “that it is selfish in me to have

  asked you to visit the old woman again, before she dies: yet perhaps

  it would have been a greater shock to hear suddenly that I was dead,

  than to see me first thus.”

  I clasped her shrivelled hand: “Are you indeed so ill?” I asked .

  “Do you not perceive death in my face,” replied she, “it is strange;

  I ought to have expected this, and yet I confess it has taken me un-

  aware . I never clung to life, or enjoyed it, till these last months, while

  among those I senselessly deserted: and it is hard to be snatched

  immediately away . I am glad, however, that I am not a victim of the

  plague; probably I should have died at this hour, though the world

  had continued as it was in my youth .”

  She spoke with difficulty, and I perceived that she regretted the

  necessity of death, even more than she cared to confess . Yet she

  had not to complain of an undue shortening of existence; her faded

  person shewed that life had naturally spent itself . We had been alone

  at first; now Clara entered; the Countess turned to her with a smile,

  and took the hand of this lovely child; her roseate palm and snowy

  fingers, contrasted with relaxed fibres and yellow hue of those of her

  aged friend; she bent to kiss her, touching her withered mouth with

  the warm, full lips of youth . “Verney,” said the Countess, “I need

  not recommend this dear girl to you, for your own sake you will

  preserve her . Were the world as it was, I should have a thousand sage

  precautions to impress, that one so sensitive, good, and beauteous,

  might escape the dangers that used to lurk for the destruction of the

  fair and excellent . This is all nothing now .

  “I commit you, my kind nurse, to your uncle’s care; to yours I

  entrust the dearest relic of my better self . Be to Adrian, sweet one,

  what you have been to me—enliven his sadness with your sprightly

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  sallies; sooth his anguish by your sober and inspired converse, when

  he is dying; nurse him as you have done me .”

  Clara burst into tears; “Kind girl,” said the Countess, “do not

  weep for me . Many dear friends are left to you .”

  “And yet,” cried Clara, “you talk of their dying also . This is in-

  deed cruel —how could I live, if they were gone? If it were possible

  for my beloved protector to die before me, I could not nurse him; I

  could only die too .”

  The venerable lady survived this scene only twenty-four hours .

  She was the last tie binding us to the ancient state of things . It was

  impossible to look on her, and not call to mind in their wonted guise,

  events and persons, as alien to our present situation as the disputes

  of Themistocles and Aristides, or the wars of the two roses in our na-

  tive land . The crown of England had pressed her brow; the memory

  of my father and his misfortunes, the vain struggles of the late king,

  the images of Raymond, Evadne, and Perdita, who had lived in the

  world’s prime, were brought vividly before us . We consigned her

  to the oblivious tomb with reluctance; and when I turned from her

  grave, Janus veiled his retrospective face; that which gazed on fu-

  ture generations had long lost its faculty .


  After remaining a week at Dijon, until thirty of our number

  deserted the vacant ranks of life, we continued our way towards

  Geneva . At noon on the second day we arrived at the foot of Jura .

  We halted here during the heat of the day. Here fifty human beings—

  fifty, the only human beings that survived of the food-teeming earth,

  assembled to read in the looks of each other ghastly plague, or wast-

  ing sorrow, desperation, or worse, carelessness of future or present

  evil . Here we assembled at the foot of this mighty wall of mountain,

  under a spreading walnut tree; a brawling stream refreshed the green

  sward by its sprinkling; and the busy grasshopper chirped among

  the thyme . We clustered together a group of wretched sufferers . A

  mother cradled in her enfeebled arms the child, last of many, whose

  glazed eye was about to close for ever . Here beauty, late glowing

  in youthful lustre and consciousness, now wan and neglected, knelt

  fanning with uncertain motion the beloved, who lay striving to paint

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  his features, distorted by illness, with a thankful smile . There an

  hard-featured, weather-worn veteran, having prepared his meal, sat,

  his head dropped on his breast, the useless knife falling from his

  grasp, his limbs utterly relaxed, as thought of wife and child, and

  dearest relative, all lost, passed across his recollection . There sat a

  man who for forty years had basked in fortune’s tranquil sunshine;

  he held the hand of his last hope, his beloved daughter, who had just

  attained womanhood; and he gazed on her with anxious eyes, while

  she tried to rally her fainting spirit to comfort him . Here a servant,

  faithful to the last, though dying, waited on one, who, though still

  erect with health, gazed with gasping fear on the variety of woe

  around .

  Adrian stood leaning against a tree; he held a book in his hand,

  but his eye wandered from the pages, and sought mine; they mingled

  a sympathetic glance; his looks confessed that his thoughts had quit-

  ted the inanimate print, for pages more pregnant with meaning, more

  absorbing, spread out before him . By the margin of the stream, apart

  from all, in a tranquil nook, where the purling brook kissed the green

  sward gently, Clara and Evelyn were at play, sometimes beating the

  water with large boughs, sometimes watching the summer-flies that

  sported upon it. Evelyn now chased a butterfly—now gathered a

  flower for his cousin; and his laughing cherub-face and clear brow

  told of the light heart that beat in his bosom . Clara, though she en-

  deavoured to give herself up to his amusement, often forgot him, as

  she turned to observe Adrian and me . She was now fourteen, and

  retained her childish appearance, though in height a woman; she

  acted the part of the tenderest mother to my little orphan boy; to

  see her playing with him, or attending silently and submissively on

  our wants, you thought only of her admirable docility and patience;

  but, in her soft eyes, and the veined curtains that veiled them, in

  the clearness of her marmoreal brow, and the tender expression of

  her lips, there was an intelligence and beauty that at once excited

  admiration and love .

  When the sun had sunk towards the precipitate west, and the

  evening shadows grew long, we prepared to ascend the mountain .

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  The attention that we were obliged to pay to the sick, made our

  progress slow. The winding road, though steep, presented a confined

  view of rocky fields and hills, each hiding the other, till our farther

  ascent disclosed them in succession . We were seldom shaded from

  the declining sun, whose slant beams were instinct with exhausting

  heat. There are times when minor difficulties grow gigantic —times,

  when as the Hebrew poet expressively terms it, “the grasshopper is a

  burthen;” so was it with our ill fated party this evening . Adrian, usu-

  ally the first to rally his spirits, and dash foremost into fatigue and

  hardship, with relaxed limbs and declined head, the reins hanging

  loosely in his grasp, left the choice of the path to the instinct of his

  horse, now and then painfully rousing himself, when the steepness of

  the ascent required that he should keep his seat with better care . Fear

  and horror encompassed me . Did his languid air attest that he also

  was struck with contagion? How long, when I look on this match-

  less specimen of mortality, may I perceive that his thought answers

  mine? how long will those limbs obey the kindly spirit within? how

  long will light and life dwell in the eyes of this my sole remaining

  friend? Thus pacing slowly, each hill surmounted, only presented

  another to be ascended; each jutting corner only discovered another,

  sister to the last, endlessly . Sometimes the pressure of sickness in

  one among us, caused the whole cavalcade to halt; the call for water,

  the eagerly expressed wish to repose; the cry of pain, and suppressed

  sob of the mourner—such were the sorrowful attendants of our pas-

  sage of the Jura .

  Adrian had gone first. I saw him, while I was detained by the loos-

  ening of a girth, struggling with the upward path, seemingly more

  difficult than any we had yet passed. He reached the top, and the

  dark outline of his figure stood in relief against the sky. He seemed

  to behold something unexpected and wonderful; for, pausing, his

  head stretched out, his arms for a moment extended, he seemed to

  give an All Hail! to some new vision . Urged by curiosity, I hurried

  to join him . After battling for many tedious minutes with the preci-

  pice, the same scene presented itself to me, which had wrapt him in

  extatic wonder .

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  Nature, or nature’s favourite, this lovely earth, presented her most

  unrivalled beauties in resplendent and sudden exhibition . Below,

  far, far below, even as it were in the yawning abyss of the ponderous

  globe, lay the placid and azure expanse of lake Leman; vine-covered

  hills hedged it in, and behind dark mountains in cone-like shape, or

  irregular cyclopean wall, served for further defence . But beyond,

  and high above all, as if the spirits of the air had suddenly unveiled

  their bright abodes, placed in scaleless altitude in the stainless sky,

  heaven-kissing, companions of the unattainable ether, were the glo-

  rious Alps, clothed in dazzling robes of light by the setting sun . And,

  as if the world’s wonders were never to be exhausted, their vast im-

  mensities, their jagged crags, and roseate painting, appeared again

  in the lake below, dipping their proud heights beneath the unruffled

  waves—palaces for the Naiads of the placid waters . Towns and

  villages lay scattered at the foot of Jura, which, with dark ravine,

  and black promontories, stretched its roots into the watery expanse

  beneath . Carried away by wonder, I forgot the death of man, and

  the living and beloved friend near me . When I turned, I saw tears

  streaming from his eyes; his thin hands pressed one against the oth
er,

  his animated countenance beaming with admiration; “Why,” cried

  he, at last, “Why, oh heart, whisperest thou of grief to me? Drink in

  the beauty of that scene, and possess delight beyond what a fabled

  paradise could afford .”

  By degrees, our whole party surmounting the steep, joined us, not

  one among them, but gave visible tokens of admiration, surpassing

  any before experienced . One cried, “God reveals his heaven to us; we

  may die blessed .” Another and another, with broken exclamations,

  and extravagant phrases, endeavoured to express the intoxicating

  effect of this wonder of nature . So we remained awhile, lightened

  of the pressing burthen of fate, forgetful of death, into whose night

  we were about to plunge; no longer reflecting that our eyes now

  and for ever were and would be the only ones which might perceive

  the divine magnificence of this terrestrial exhibition. An enthusiastic

  transport, akin to happiness, burst, like a sudden ray from the sun,

  on our darkened life . Precious attribute of woe-worn humanity! that

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  can snatch extatic emotion, even from under the very share and har-

  row, that ruthlessly ploughs up and lays waste every hope .

  This evening was marked by another event . Passing through Fer-

  ney in our way to Geneva, unaccustomed sounds of music arose

  from the rural church which stood embosomed in trees, surrounded

  by smokeless, vacant cottages . The peal of an organ with rich swell

  awoke the mute air, lingering along, and mingling with the intense

  beauty that clothed the rocks and woods, and waves around . Mu-

  sic—the language of the immortals, disclosed to us as testimony of

  their existence—music, “silver key of the fountain of tears,” child

  of love, soother of grief, inspirer of heroism and radiant thoughts,

  O music, in this our desolation, we had forgotten thee! Nor pipe at

  eve cheered us, nor harmony of voice, nor linked thrill of string;

  thou camest upon us now, like the revealing of other forms of be-

  ing; and transported as we had been by the loveliness of nature,

  fancying that we beheld the abode of spirits, now we might well

  imagine that we heard their melodious communings . We paused in

  such awe as would seize on a pale votarist, visiting some holy shrine

  at midnight; if she beheld animated and smiling, the image which