Dorcas would have expostulated and explained and apologized, but her mistress cut her short with a sharp tap of her fan.

"Little fool, hold thy peace! as though I didn't know an honest face when I see it!

"Come, good people, look me well over, and you'll soon see I have none of the tokens. It is but a colic, such as I am well used to at this season of the year; but in these days let a body's finger but ache, and all the world runs helter skelter this way and that, calling out, 'The plague! the plague!' The plague, forsooth! as though I had not lived through a score of such scares of plague. If men would but listen to me, there need never be any more plagues in London. But the fools will not hear wisdom."

"What is your remedy, madam?" asked Dinah, who saw very clearly that the old lady had gauged her symptoms aright; and although she had alarmed her attendants by a partial collapse an hour before, was mending now, and had no symptom of the distemper upon her.

"My remedy is too simple for fools. Fill up every well in London--which is just a poison trap--and drink only New River water, and make every house draw its supply from thence, and we shall soon cease to hear of the plague! That's my remedy; but when I tell men so, they gibe and jeer and call me fool for my pains.

Fools every one of them! If it would only please Providence to burn their city about their ears and fill up all the old wells with the rubbish, you would soon see an end of these scares of plague. Tush!

if men will drink rank poison they deserve to have the plague--that is all I have to say to them."

Such an idea as this was certainly far in advance of the times, and it was small wonder that Lady Scrope found no serious listeners when she propounded her scheme. Dinah did not profess to have an opinion on such a wide question. Her duties were with the sick.

Others must seek for the cause of the outbreak. That was not the province of women.

Something in her way of moving about and performing her little offices pleased the fancy of the capricious old woman, as did also the aspect of the two girls, who were a.s.sisting Dorcas to set the room to rights after the confusion of the morning, when the mistress had suddenly been taken with a violent colic, which had turned her blue and rigid, and had convinced her household that she was taken for death, and that by a seizure of the prevailing malady.

She asked Dinah of herself and her plans, and nodded her head with approval as she heard that the two girls were to attend the sick likewise under her care.

"Good girls, brave girls--I like to see courage in old and young alike. If I were young myself, I vow I would go with you. It's a fine set of experiences you will have.

"Young woman, I like you. I shall want to hear of you and your work. Listen to me. This house is my own. I have no one with me here save the child Dorcas, and I don't think she is of the stuff that would be afraid; and I take good care of her, so that she is in no peril. Come back hither to me whenever you can. This house shall be open to you. You can come hither for rest and food. It is better than to go to and fro where there be so many young folks as in the place you come from. Bring the girls with you, too. They be good, brave maidens, and deserve a place of rest. I have victualled my house well. I have enough and to spare. I like to hear the news, and none can know more in these days than a plague nurse.

"Come, children, what say you to this? Go to and fro amongst the sick; but come home hither and tell me all you have done. What say you? Against rules for persons to pa.s.s from infected houses into clean ones? Bah! in times like these what can men hope to do by their rules and regulations? Plague nurses and plague doctors are under no rules. They must needs go hither and thither wherever they are called. If I fear not for myself, you need not fear for me. I shall never die of the plague; I have had my fortune told me too many times to fear that! I shall never die in my bed--that they all agree to tell me. Have no fears for me; I have none for myself.

"Make this house your home, you three good women. I am not a good woman myself, but I know the kind when I see them. They are rare, but all the more valued for that. Come, I say; you will not find a better place!"

Dorcas clasped her hands in rapture and looked from one to the other. The fear of the distemper was small in comparison with the pleasure of the thought of seeing her sister and aunt and friend at intervals, now that she was so completely shut up in this lonely house, and that the servants had all fled never to return.

It was just such an eccentric and capricious whim as was eminently characteristic of Lady Scrope. She had had nothing but her own whims to guide her through life, and she indulged them at her pleasure. She had taken a fancy to Dinah from the first moment. She knew all about the family of her young companion, from having listened to Dorcas's chatter when in the mood. Keenly interested in the spread of the plague, which had driven away all her fashionable friends, she was eager for news about it, and the more ghastly the tales that were told, the more did she seem to revel in them. To have news first hand from those who actually tended the sick seemed to her a capital plan; and Dinah recognized at once the advantage of having admittance for herself and the two girls to this solitary and commodious house, where rest and refreshment could be readily obtained, and where their coming and going would not be likely to be observed or to hurt any one.

"If your ladyship really means it--" she began.

"My ladyship generally does mean what she says--as Dorcas will tell you if you ask her," was the rather short, sharp reply. "Say no more, say no more; I hate chitter-chatter and shilly-shally. The thing's settled, and there's an end of it. Go your ways, go your ways; I'm none too ill for Dorcas to look to, now that the little fool is a.s.sured that I haven't got the plague. But you may have brought it here yourself, so you are bound in duty to come back and look after us the first moment you can. Go along with you all, and bring me word what London is doing, and what the streets are like.

They say there be courts down in the worst parts of the town where not a living person remains, and where there be none left to give notice of the deaths. You go and bring me word about all that.

"A fine thing truly for our grand city! The living soon will not be enough to bury the dead! Go! go! go! I shall wait and watch for your return. None will interfere with anything that goes on in my house. You can come and go at will. Dorcas will give you a key. I will trust you. You have a face to be trusted."

"It is quite true--n.o.body ever dares interfere with her," said Dorcas, as she led the way downstairs. "They think she is a witch; and truly, methinks she is the strangest woman that ever drew breath! But I shall love her for what she has said and done today.

I pray you be not long in coming again. None can want you much more sorely than I do!"

CHAPTER VIII. IN THE DOOMED CITY.

The clocks in the church steeples were chiming the hour of ten as Dinah and her two companions started forth a second time upon their errand of mercy and charity. It was an hour at which in ordinary times all the city should be alive, the streets filled with pa.s.sersby, wagons lumbering along with heavy freights, fine folks in their coaches or on horseback picking their way from place to place, and shopmen or their apprentices crying their wares from open doorways.

Now the streets were almost empty. The shops were almost all shut up. Here and there an open bake house was to be seen, orders having been issued that these places were to remain available for the public, come what might; and women or trembling servant maids were to be seen going to and fro with their loads of bread or dough for baking.

But each person looked askance at the other. Neighbours were afraid to pause to exchange greetings, and hurried away from all contact with one another; and children breaking away from their mothers'

sides were speedily called back, and chidden for their temerity.

Some of the churches stood wide open, and persons were seen to hurry in, lock themselves for a few minutes into separate pews, and pour out their souls in supplication. Often the sound of lamentation and weeping was heard to issue from these buildings. At certain hours of the day such of the clergy as were not scared away through fear of infection, or who were not otherwise occupied amongst the sick, would come in and address the persons gathered there, or read the daily office of prayer; but although at first these services had been well attended--people flocking to the churches as though to take sanctuary there--the widely-increased mortality and the fearful spread of the distemper had caused a panic throughout the city. The magistrates had issued warnings against the a.s.sembling of persons together in the same building, and the congregations were themselves so wasted and decimated by death and disease that each week saw fewer and fewer able to attend.

From every steeple in the city the bells tolled ceaselessly for the dead. But it was already whispered that soon they would toll no more, for the deaths were becoming past all count, and there might likely enough be soon no one left to toll.

At one open place through which Dinah led her companions, a tall man, strangely habited, and with a great ma.s.s of untrimmed hair and beard, was addressing a wild harangue to a ring of breathless listeners. In vivid and graphic words he was summing up the wickedness and perversity of the city, and telling how that the wrath of G.o.d had descended upon it, and that He would no longer stay His hand. The day of mercy had gone by; the day of vengeance had come--the day of reckoning and of punishment. The innocent must now perish with the guilty, and he warned each one of his hearers to prepare to meet his Judge.

The man was gazing up overhead with eyes that seemed ready to start from their sockets. Every face in the crowd grew pale with horror.

The man seemed rooted to the spot with a ghastly terror. They followed the direction of his gaze, but could see nothing save the quivering sunshine above them.

Suddenly one in the crowd gave a shriek which those who heard it never forgot, and fell to the ground like one dead.

With a wild, terrible laugh the preacher gathered up his long gown and fled onwards, and the crowd scattered helter skelter, terrified and desperate. None seemed to have a thought for the miserable man smitten down before their very eyes. All took care to avoid approaching him in their hasty flight. He lay with his face upturned to the steely, pitiless summer sky. A woman coming furtively along with a market basket upon her arm suddenly set up a dolorous cry at sight of him, and setting down her basket ran towards him, the tears streaming down her face.

"Why, it is none other than good John Harwood and his wife Elizabeth!" cried Janet, making a forward step. "Oh, poor creatures, poor creatures! Good aunt, prithee let us do what we can for their relief. I knew not the man, his face was so changed, but I know him now. They are very honest, good folks, and have worked for us ere now. They live hard by, if so be they have not changed their lodgings. Can we do nothing to help them?"

"We will do what we can," said Dinah. "Remember, my children, all that I have bidden you do when approaching a stricken person. Be not rash, neither be over-much affrighted. The Lord has preserved me, and methinks He will preserve you, too."

With that she stepped forward and laid a hand upon the shoulder of the poor woman, who was weeping copiously over her husband, and calling him by every name she could think of, though he lay rigid with half-open eyes and heeded her not.

"Good friend," said Dinah, in her quiet, commanding fashion, "it is of no avail thus to weep and cry. We must get your goodman within doors, and tend him there. See, there is a man with a handcart over yonder. Go call him, and bid him come to our help. We must not let your goodman lie out here in the streets in this hot sunshine."

"G.o.d bless you! G.o.d bless you!" cried the poor distracted woman, unspeakably thankful for any help at a time when neighbours and friends were wont alike to flee in terror from any stricken person.

"But alas and woe is me! Tell me, is this the plague?"

"I fear so," answered Dinah, who had bent over the smitten man; "but go quickly and do as I have said. There be some amongst the sick who recover. Lose not heart at the outset, but trust in G.o.d, and do all that thou art bidden."

The woman ran quickly, and the man, who was indeed one of those forlorn creatures who, for a livelihood, were even willing to scour the streets and remove from thence those that were stricken down by death as they went their way amongst their fellows, came with her at her request, and lifting her husband into his cart, wheeled him away towards a poor alley where lay her home.

As she turned into it she looked at the three women who followed, and said:

"G.o.d have mercy upon us! I would not have you adventure yourselves here. There be but three houses in all the street where the distemper has not come, and of those, mine, which was one, must now be shut up. Lord have mercy upon us indeed, else we be all dead men!"

Dinah paused for a brief moment, and looked at her young charges.

"My children," she said, "needs must that I go where the need is so great. But bethink you a moment if ye have strength and wish to follow. I know not what sad and terrible sights we may have to encounter. Think ye that ye can bear them? Have ye the strength to go forward? If not, I would have you go back ere you have reached the contamination."

Janet looked at Gertrude, and Gertrude looked at Janet; but though there was great seriousness and awe in their faces, there was no fear. Gertrude had gone through so much already within the walls of her home that she had no fear greater than that of remaining in helpless idleness there, alone with her own thoughts and memories.

As for Janet, she had much of the nature of her aunt--much of that eager, intense sympathy and compa.s.sion for the sick and suffering which has induced women in all ages to go forth in times of dire need, and risk their lives for their stricken and afflicted brethren.

So after one glance of mutual comprehension and sympathy, they both answered in one breath:

"No, we will not turn back. We will go with you. Where the need is sorest, there would we be, too."

"G.o.d bless you! G.o.d bless you for angels of mercy!" sobbed the poor woman, who heard their words, and knowing both Dinah and Janet, understood something of the situation, "for we be perishing like sheep here in this place, shut away from all, and with never a nurse to come nigh us. There be some rough fellows placed outside the houses to see that none go in or out, and perchance they do their best to find nurses; but at such a time as this it is small wonder if ofttimes none are to be found. And some they have brought are worse than none. The Lord protect us from the tender mercies of such!"

The narrow court into which they now turned was cool in comparison with the sunny street; but there was nothing refreshing in the coolness, for fumes of every sort exhaled from the houses, and at the far end there burned a fire of resinous pine logs, the smoke from which, when it rolled down the court, was almost choking.