The Plague, Pestilence & Apocalypse MEGAPACK™

by Robert Reed

  every idle whim, and deemed our time well spent, when we could

  behold the passage of the hours without dismay . We loitered along

  the lovely Vale of Servox; passed long hours on the bridge, which,

  crossing the ravine of Arve, commands a prospect of its pine-clothed

  depths, and the snowy mountains that wall it in . We rambled through

  romantic Switzerland; till, fear of coming winter leading us forward,

  the first days of October found us in the valley of La Maurienne,

  which leads to Cenis . I cannot explain the reluctance we felt at leav-

  ing this land of mountains; perhaps it was, that we regarded the Alps

  as boundaries between our former and our future state of existence,

  and so clung fondly to what of old we had loved . Perhaps, because

  we had now so few impulses urging to a choice between two modes

  of action, we were pleased to preserve the existence of one, and

  preferred the prospect of what we were to do, to the recollection of

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  what had been done . We felt that for this year danger was past; and

  we believed that, for some months, we were secured to each other .

  There was a thrilling, agonizing delight in the thought—it filled the

  eyes with misty tears, it tore the heart with tumultuous heavings;

  frailer than the “snow fall in the river,” were we each and all—but

  we strove to give life and individuality to the meteoric course of

  our several existences, and to feel that no moment escaped us unen-

  joyed . Thus tottering on the dizzy brink, we were happy . Yes! as we

  sat beneath the toppling rocks, beside the waterfalls, near

  —Forests, ancient as the hills,

  And folding sunny spots of greenery, where the chamois grazed,

  and the timid squirrel laid up its hoard—descanting on the charms

  of nature, drinking in the while her unalienable beauties—we were,

  in an empty world, happy .

  Yet, O days of joy—days, when eye spoke to eye, and voices,

  sweeter than the music of the swinging branches of the pines, or

  rivulet’s gentle murmur, answered mine—yet, O days replete with

  beatitude, days of loved society—days unutterably dear to me for-

  lorn—pass, O pass before me, making me in your memory forget

  what I am . Behold, how my streaming eyes blot this senseless pa-

  per—behold, how my features are convulsed by agonizing throes,

  at your mere recollection, now that, alone, my tears flow, my lips

  quiver, my cries fill the air, unseen, unmarked, unheard! Yet, O yet,

  days of delight! let me dwell on your long-drawn hours!

  As the cold increased upon us, we passed the Alps, and descended

  into Italy . At the uprising of morn, we sat at our repast, and cheated

  our regrets by gay sallies or learned disquisitions . The live-long day

  we sauntered on, still keeping in view the end of our journey, but

  careless of the hour of its completion . As the evening star shone

  out, and the orange sunset, far in the west, marked the position of

  the dear land we had for ever left, talk, thought enchaining, made

  the hours fly—O that we had lived thus for ever and for ever! Of

  what consequence was it to our four hearts, that they alone were

  the fountains of life in the wide world? As far as mere individual

  sentiment was concerned, we had rather be left thus united together,

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  than if, each alone in a populous desert of unknown men, we had

  wandered truly companionless till life’s last term . In this manner, we

  endeavoured to console each other; in this manner, true philosophy

  taught us to reason .

  It was the delight of Adrian and myself to wait on Clara, naming

  her the little queen of the world, ourselves her humblest servitors .

  When we arrived at a town, our first care was to select for her its

  most choice abode; to make sure that no harrowing relic remained

  of its former inhabitants; to seek food for her, and minister to her

  wants with assiduous tenderness . Clara entered into our scheme

  with childish gaiety . Her chief business was to attend on Evelyn; but

  it was her sport to array herself in splendid robes, adorn herself with

  sunny gems, and ape a princely state . Her religion, deep and pure,

  did not teach her to refuse to blunt thus the keen sting of regret; her

  youthful vivacity made her enter, heart and soul, into these strange

  masquerades .

  We had resolved to pass the ensuing winter at Milan, which, as

  being a large and luxurious city, would afford us choice of homes .

  We had descended the Alps, and left far behind their vast forests

  and mighty crags . We entered smiling Italy . Mingled grass and corn

  grew in her plains, the unpruned vines threw their luxuriant branches

  around the elms . The grapes, overripe, had fallen on the ground, or

  hung purple, or burnished green, among the red and yellow leaves .

  The ears of standing corn winnowed to emptiness by the spendthrift

  winds; the fallen foliage of the trees, the weed-grown brooks, the

  dusky olive, now spotted with its blackened fruit; the chestnuts, to

  which the squirrel only was harvest-man; all plenty, and yet, alas!

  all poverty, painted in wondrous hues and fantastic groupings this

  land of beauty . In the towns, in the voiceless towns, we visited the

  churches, adorned by pictures, master-pieces of art, or galleries of

  statues—while in this genial clime the animals, in new found liberty,

  rambled through the gorgeous palaces, and hardly feared our forgot-

  ten aspect . The dove-coloured oxen turned their full eyes on us, and

  paced slowly by; a startling throng of silly sheep, with pattering feet,

  would start up in some chamber, formerly dedicated to the repose

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  of beauty, and rush, huddling past us, down the marble staircase

  into the street, and again in at the first open door, taking unrebuked

  possession of hallowed sanctuary, or kingly council-chamber . We

  no longer started at these occurrences, nor at worse exhibition of

  change—when the palace had become a mere tomb, pregnant with

  fetid stench, strewn with the dead; and we could perceive how pes-

  tilence and fear had played strange antics, chasing the luxurious

  dame to the dank fields and bare cottage; gathering, among carpets

  of Indian woof, and beds of silk, the rough peasant, or the deformed

  half-human shape of the wretched beggar .

  We arrived at Milan, and stationed ourselves in the Vice-Roy’s

  palace. Here we made laws for ourselves, dividing our day, and fix-

  ing distinct occupations for each hour . In the morning we rode in

  the adjoining country, or wandered through the palaces, in search

  of pictures or antiquities . In the evening we assembled to read or

  to converse . There were few books that we dared read; few, that

  did not cruelly deface the painting we bestowed on our solitude, by

  recalling combinations and emotions never more to be experienced

  by us. Metaphysical disquisition; fiction, which wandering from all

  reality, lost itself in self-created errors; poets of times so far gone by,

  that to re
ad of them was as to read of Atlantis and Utopia; or such as

  referred to nature only, and the workings of one particular mind; but

  most of all, talk, varied and ever new, beguiled our hours .

  While we paused thus in our onward career towards death, time

  held on its accustomed course . Still and for ever did the earth roll

  on, enthroned in her atmospheric car, speeded by the force of the

  invisible coursers of never-erring necessity . And now, this dew-drop

  in the sky, this ball, ponderous with mountains, lucent with waves,

  passing from the short tyranny of watery Pisces and the frigid Ram,

  entered the radiant demesne of Taurus and the Twins . There, fanned

  by vernal airs, the Spirit of Beauty sprung from her cold repose;

  and, with winnowing wings and soft pacing feet, set a girdle of

  verdure around the earth, sporting among the violets, hiding within

  the springing foliage of the trees, tripping lightly down the radiant

  streams into the sunny deep . “For lo! winter is past, the rain is over

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  and gone; the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of

  birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; the fig

  tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines, with the tender grape,

  give a good smell .”26 Thus was it in the time of the ancient regal

  poet; thus was it now .

  Yet how could we miserable hail the approach of this delightful

  season? We hoped indeed that death did not now as heretofore walk

  in its shadow; yet, left as we were alone to each other, we looked in

  each other’s faces with enquiring eyes, not daring altogether to trust

  to our presentiments, and endeavouring to divine which would be

  the hapless survivor to the other three . We were to pass the summer

  at the lake of Como, and thither we removed as soon as spring grew

  to her maturity, and the snow disappeared from the hill tops . Ten

  miles from Como, under the steep heights of the eastern mountains,

  by the margin of the lake, was a villa called the Pliniana, from its

  being built on the site of a fountain, whose periodical ebb and flow

  is described by the younger Pliny in his letters . The house had near-

  ly fallen into ruin, till in the year 2090, an English nobleman had

  bought it, and fitted it up with every luxury. Two large halls, hung

  with splendid tapestry, and paved with marble, opened on each side

  of a court, of whose two other sides one overlooked the deep dark

  lake, and the other was bounded by a mountain, from whose stony

  side gushed, with roar and splash, the celebrated fountain . Above,

  underwood of myrtle and tufts of odorous plants crowned the rock,

  while the star-pointing giant cypresses reared themselves in the blue

  air, and the recesses of the hills were adorned with the luxuriant

  growth of chestnut-trees. Here we fixed our summer residence. We

  had a lovely skiff, in which we sailed, now stemming the midmost

  waves, now coasting the over-hanging and craggy banks, thick sown

  with evergreens, which dipped their shining leaves in the waters, and

  were mirrored in many a little bay and creek of waters of translu-

  cent darkness . Here orange plants bloomed, here birds poured forth

  melodious hymns; and here, during spring, the cold snake emerged

  from the clefts, and basked on the sunny terraces of rock .

  26

  Solomon’s Song .

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  Were we not happy in this paradisiacal retreat? If some kind spirit

  had whispered forgetfulness to us, methinks we should have been

  happy here, where the precipitous mountains, nearly pathless, shut

  from our view the far fields of desolate earth, and with small exer-

  tion of the imagination, we might fancy that the cities were still

  resonant with popular hum, and the peasant still guided his plough

  through the furrow, and that we, the world’s free denizens, enjoyed

  a voluntary exile, and not a remediless cutting off from our extinct

  species .

  Not one among us enjoyed the beauty of this scenery so much

  as Clara . Before we quitted Milan, a change had taken place in her

  habits and manners . She lost her gaiety, she laid aside her sports,

  and assumed an almost vestal plainness of attire . She shunned us,

  retiring with Evelyn to some distant chamber or silent nook; nor did

  she enter into his pastimes with the same zest as she was wont, but

  would sit and watch him with sadly tender smiles, and eyes bright

  with tears, yet without a word of complaint . She approached us

  timidly, avoided our caresses, nor shook off her embarrassment till

  some serious discussion or lofty theme called her for awhile out of

  herself . Her beauty grew as a rose, which, opening to the summer

  wind, discloses leaf after leaf till the sense aches with its excess

  of loveliness . A slight and variable colour tinged her cheeks, and

  her motions seemed attuned by some hidden harmony of surpassing

  sweetness . We redoubled our tenderness and earnest attentions . She

  received them with grateful smiles, that fled swift as sunny beam

  from a glittering wave on an April day .

  Our only acknowledged point of sympathy with her, appeared

  to be Evelyn . This dear little fellow was a comforter and delight to

  us beyond all words . His buoyant spirit, and his innocent ignorance

  of our vast calamity, were balm to us, whose thoughts and feelings

  were over-wrought and spun out in the immensity of speculative

  sorrow . To cherish, to caress, to amuse him was the common task of

  all . Clara, who felt towards him in some degree like a young mother,

  gratefully acknowledged our kindness towards him . To me, O! to

  me, who saw the clear brows and soft eyes of the beloved of my

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  heart, my lost and ever dear Idris, re-born in his gentle face, to me

  he was dear even to pain; if I pressed him to my heart, methought I

  clasped a real and living part of her, who had lain there through long

  years of youthful happiness .

  It was the custom of Adrian and myself to go out each day in our

  skiff to forage in the adjacent country . In these expeditions we were

  seldom accompanied by Clara or her little charge, but our return

  was an hour of hilarity . Evelyn ransacked our stores with childish

  eagerness, and we always brought some new found gift for our

  fair companion . Then too we made discoveries of lovely scenes or

  gay palaces, whither in the evening we all proceeded . Our sailing

  expeditions were most divine, and with a fair wind or transverse

  course we cut the liquid waves; and, if talk failed under the pressure

  of thought, I had my clarionet with me, which awoke the echoes,

  and gave the change to our careful minds . Clara at such times often

  returned to her former habits of free converse and gay sally; and

  though our four hearts alone beat in the world, those four hearts

  were happy .

  One day, on our return from the town of Como, with a laden boat,

  we expected as usual to be met at the port by Clara and Evelyn, and

  we were somewhat surprised to
see the beach vacant . I, as my nature

  prompted, would not prognosticate evil, but explained it away as

  a mere casual incident . Not so Adrian . He was seized with sudden

  trembling and apprehension, and he called to me with vehemence

  to steer quickly for land, and, when near, leapt from the boat, half

  falling into the water; and, scrambling up the steep bank, hastened

  along the narrow strip of garden, the only level space between the

  lake and the mountain . I followed without delay; the garden and

  inner court were empty, so was the house, whose every room we vis-

  ited . Adrian called loudly upon Clara’s name, and was about to rush

  up the near mountain-path, when the door of a summer-house at the

  end of the garden slowly opened, and Clara appeared, not advanc-

  ing towards us, but leaning against a column of the building with

  blanched cheeks, in a posture of utter despondency . Adrian sprang

  towards her with a cry of joy, and folded her delightedly in his arms .

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  She withdrew from his embrace, and, without a word, again entered

  the summer-house . Her quivering lips, her despairing heart refused

  to afford her voice to express our misfortune . Poor little Evelyn had,

  while playing with her, been seized with sudden fever, and now lay

  torpid and speechless on a little couch in the summer-house .

  For a whole fortnight we unceasingly watched beside the poor

  child, as his life declined under the ravages of a virulent typhus . His

  little form and tiny lineaments encaged the embryo of the world-

  spanning mind of man . Man’s nature, brimful of passions and affec-

  tions, would have had an home in that little heart, whose swift pulsa-

  tions hurried towards their close. His small hand’s fine mechanism,

  now flaccid and unbent, would in the growth of sinew and muscle,

  have achieved works of beauty or of strength . His tender rosy feet

  would have trod in firm manhood the bowers and glades of earth—

  these reflections were now of little use: he lay, thought and strength

  suspended, waiting unresisting the final blow.

  We watched at his bedside, and when the access of fever was on

  him, we neither spoke nor looked at each other, marking only his

  obstructed breath and the mortal glow that tinged his sunken cheek,

  the heavy death that weighed on his eyelids . It is a trite evasion to