Part 25 (1/2)

In the summer of 1793, the city of Penn numbered forty-five thousand souls, and lay in the form of an irregularly bounded triangle, the apex being about seven squares, as we say, west of the Delaware. From this it spread eastward, widening until the base, thinly builded with shops, homes, and warehouses, extended along the Delaware River a distance of about two miles from Callowhill Street to Cedar. It was on the parts nearest to the river that the death-cloud lay.

De Courval had walked from the Falls of Schuylkill late in the morning, and, after having been ferried across the Schuylkill, pa.s.sed by forest and farm roads over a familiar, rolling country, and arrived at Merion, in the Welsh barony, where he parted from his mother. To this distance he was now to add the seven miles which would bring him to the city.

He soon reached the Lancaster road, and after securing a bowl of bread and milk, for which he paid the exorbitant price of two s.h.i.+llings at a farm-house, he lay down in the woods and, lighting his meerschaum pipe, rested during the early afternoon, glad of shelter from the moist heat of the September day.

He had much to think about. His mother he dismissed, smiling. If, after what he had said, he had not obeyed the call of duty and grat.i.tude, he knew full well that she would have been surprised, despite her protests and the terror with which his errand filled her. He, too, felt it, for it is the form which peril takes rather than equality of risk which makes disease appal many a man for whom war has the charm which awakens the l.u.s.t of contest, and not such alarm as the presence of the unseen foe which gives no quarter. He dismissed his fears with a silent appeal for strength and support.

He thought then of his enemy. Where was he? This pestilence, the inexplicable act of an all-powerful G.o.d, had for a time been set as a barrier between him and his foe. If either he or Carteaux died of it, there was an end of all the indecisions that affection had put in his way. He had a moral shock at the idea that he was unwilling to believe it well that the will of G.o.d should lose him the fierce joy of a personal vengeance. How remote seemed such a feeling from the religious calm of the Quaker home! And then a rosy face, a slight, gray-clad figure, came before him with the clearness of visual perception which was one of his mental peculiarities. The sense of difference of rank which his mother had never lost, and would never lose, he had long since put aside. Margaret's refinement, her young beauty, her gay sweetness, her variety of charm, he recalled as he lay; nor against these was there for him any available guard of common sense, that foe of imprudent love, to sum up the other side with the arithmetic of worldly wisdom. He rose, disturbed a little at the consciousness of a power beginning to get beyond his control, and went on his way down the long, dusty road, refreshed by the fair angel company of Love and Longing.

Very soon he was recalled from his dreams. As he came within a mile of the city, he saw tents as for an army, camp-fires, people cooking, men, women, and children lying about by the roadside and in the orchards or the woods. Two hungry-looking mechanics begged help of him. He gave them each a s.h.i.+lling and went on. The nearer sh.o.r.e of the quiet Schuylkill was lined with tents. Over the middle-ferry floating bridge came endlessly all manner of vehicles packed with scared people, the continuous drift from town of all who could afford to fly, a pitiful sight in the closing day. Beyond the river were more tents and half-starved families.

At dusk, as he went eastward on Market Street, there were fewer people, and beyond Sixth Street almost none. The taverns were closed. Commerce was at an end. Turning south, he crossed the bridge over Dock Creek at Second Street and was soon in a part of the city where death and horror had left only those whom disease, want of means, or some stringent need, forbade to leave their homes. Twenty-four thousand then or later fled the town. A gallant few who could have gone, stayed from a sense of duty.

Exposure at night was said to be fatal, so that all who could were shut up indoors, or came out in fear only to feed with pitch and fence palings the fires kindled in the streets which were supposed to give protection, but were forbidden later. A canopy of rank tar-smoke hung over the town and a dull, ruddy glow from these many fires. Gra.s.s grew in the roadway of the once busy street, and strange silence reigned where men were used to move amid the noises of trade. As he walked on deep in thought, a woman ran out of a house, crying: ”They are dead! All are dead!” She stopped him. ”Is my baby dead, too?”

”I--I do not know,” he said, looking at the wasted, yellow face of the child in her arms. She left it on the pavement, and ran away screaming.

He had never in his life touched the dead; but now, though with repugnance, he picked up the little body and laid it on a door-step. Was it really dead? he asked himself. He stood a minute looking at the corpse; then he touched it. It was unnaturally hot, as are the dead of this fever. Not seeing well in the dusk, and feeling a strange responsibility, he laid a hand on the child's heart. It was still. He moved away swiftly through the gathering gloom of deserted streets. On Front Street, near Lombard, a man, seeing him approach, ran from him across the way. A little farther, the sense of solitude and loneliness grew complete as the night closed dark about him. He had been long on his way.

A half-naked man ran out of an alley and, standing before him, cried: ”The plague is come upon us because they have numbered the people.

Death! death! you will die for this sin.” The young man, thus halted, stood appalled and then turned to look after the wild prophet of disaster, who ran up Lombard Street, his sinister cries lost as he disappeared in the gloom. Rene recalled that somewhere in the Bible he had read of how a plague had come on the Israelites for having numbered the people. Long afterward he learned that a census of Philadelphia had been taken in 1792. He stood still a moment in the gloom, amid the silence of the deserted city and then of a sudden moved rapidly onward.

He had reached the far edge of the town, his mind upon Schmidt, when he saw to his surprise by the glow of a dying fire a familiar form. ”Mr.

Girard!” he cried, in pleased surprise; for in the country little was as yet known of the disregard of death with which this man and many more were quietly nursing the sick and keeping order in a town where, except the comparatively immune negroes, few aided, and where the empty homes were being plundered. The quick thought pa.s.sed through Rene's mind that he had heard this man called an atheist by Daniel Offley.

He said to Girard: ”Ah, Monsieur, have you seen Monsieur Schmidt?”

”Not for three days. He has been busy as the best. There is one man who knows not fear. Where is he, Vicomte?”

”We do not know. We have heard nothing since he left us two weeks ago.

But he meant to live in Mrs. Swanwick's house.”

”Let us go and see,” said Girard; and with the man who already counted his wealth in millions Rene hurried on. At the house they entered easily, for the door was open, and went up-stairs.

In Schmidt's room, guided by his delirious cries, they found him.

Girard struck a light from his steel and flint, and presently they had candles lighted, and saw the yellow face, and the horrors of the _vomito_, in the disordered room.

”_Mon Dieu!_ but this is sad!” said Girard. ”Ah, the brave gentleman!

You will stay? I shall send you milk and food at once. Give him water freely, and the milk. Bathe him. Are you afraid?”

”I--yes; but I came for this, and I am here to stay.”

”I shall send you a doctor; but they are of little use.”

”Is there any precaution to take?”

”Yes. Live simply. Smoke your pipe--I believe in that. You can get cooler water by hanging out in the air demijohns and bottles wrapped in wet linen--a West-Indian way, and the well water is cold. I shall come back to-morrow.” And so advising, he left him.

De Courval set the room in order, and lighted his pipe, after obeying Girard's suggestions. At intervals he sponged the hot body of the man who was retching in agony of pain, babbling and crying out about courts and princes and a woman--ever of a woman dead and of some prison life.