Father Paul walked calmly onwards, his eyes taking in every detail of the scene.
As he reached the dead around the margin of the stream, he paused and looked upon the faces he had known so well in life, then turning to his two followers, he said:
"I trow these be all dead corpses, but I will examine each if there be any spark of life remaining. Go ye into the houses, and if there be any sound persons within, bid them, in the name of humanity and their own safety, come forth and help to bury their brethren. If they are suffered to lie here longer, every soul in this place will perish!"
Glad enough to turn his eyes from the terrible sight without, Raymond hurried past to the cluster of dwelling places beyond, and entering the first of these himself, signed to Roger to go into the second. He had some slight difficulty in pushing open the door, not because it was fastened, but owing to some encumbrance behind. When, however, he succeeded in forcing his way in, he found that the encumbrance was nothing more or less than the body of a woman lying dead along the floor of the tiny room. Upon a bed in the corner two children were lying, smiling as if in sleep, but both stiff and cold, the livid tokens of the terrible malady visible upon their little bodies, though the end seemed to have been painless. No other person was in the house, and Raymond, drawing a covering over the children as they lay, turned from the house again with a shudder of compassionate sorrow. Outside he met Roger coming forth with a look of awe upon his face.
"There be five souls within you door," he said -- "an old woman, her two sons and two daughters. But they are all dead and cold. I misdoubt me if we find one alive in the place."
"We must try farther and see," answered Raymond, his face full of the wondering consternation of so terrible a discovery; and by mutual consent they proceeded in their task together. There was something so unspeakably awful in going about alone in a veritable city of the dead.
And such indeed might this place be called. Roger was fearfully right in his prediction. Each house entered showed its number of victims to the destroyer, but not one of these victims was living to receive comfort or help from the ministrations of those who had come amongst them. And not man alone had suffered; upon the dumb beasts too had the scourge fallen: for when Roger suddenly bethought him that the creatures would want tendance in the absence of their owners, and had gone to the sheds to seek for them, nothing but death met his eye on all sides. Some in their stalls, some in the open fields, some, like their masters, beside the stream, lay the poor beasts all stone dead.
It seemed as if the scourge had fallen with peculiar virulence upon this little hamlet, in the warm cup-like hollow where it lay, and had smitten it root and branch. Possibly the waters of the stream had been poisoned higher up, and the deadly malaria had reached it in that way; possibly some condition of the atmosphere predisposed living things to take the infection. But be the cause what it might, there was no gainsaying the fact. Not a living or breathing thing remained in the hamlet; and little as Raymond knew it, such wholesale destruction was only too common throughout the length and breadth of England. But such a revelation coming upon him suddenly, brought before his very eyes when he had come with the desire to help and tend the living, filled him with an awe that was almost terror, although the terror was not for himself. Personally he had no fear; he had given himself to this work, and he would hold to it be the result what it might. But the thought of the scourge sweeping down upon a peaceful hamlet, and carrying off in a few short days every breathing thing within its limits, was indeed both terrible and pitiful. He could picture only too vividly the terror, the anguish, the agony of the poor helpless people, and longed, not to escape from such scenes, but rather to go forward to other places ere the work of destruction had been accomplished, and be with the sick when the last call came. If he had been but two days earlier in coming forward, might he not have been in time to do a work of mercy and charity even here?
But it was useless musing thus. To act, and not to think, was now the order of the day. He went slowly out from the yard they had last visited, his face as pale as death, but full of courage and high purpose.
"There is nothing living here," he said, as he reached the Father, who had not left the side of the dead. "We have been into all the houses, we have looked everywhere, but there is nothing but dead corpses: man and beast have perished alike. Nothing that breathes is left alive."
The Father looked round upon the scene of smiling desolation -- the sunny harvest fields, the laughing brook, the broad meadows -- and the ghastly rows of plague-stricken corpses at his feet, and a stern, sad change passed across his face.
"It is the hand of the Lord," he said, "and perchance He smites in mercy as well as in wrath, delivering men from the evil to come. Let us arise and go hence. Our work is for the living and not the dead."
For those three to have attempted to bury all that hamlet would have been an absolute impossibility. Dreadful as was the thought of turning away and leaving the place as it was, it was hopeless to do otherwise, and possibly in the town men might be found able and willing to come out and inter the corpses in one common grave.
With hearts full of awe, the two lads followed their conductor. He had been through similar scenes in other lands. To him there was nothing new in sights such as this. Even the sense of personal peril, little as he had ever regarded it, had long since passed away. But it was something altogether new to Raymond and his companion; and though they had seen death in many terrible forms upon the battlefield, it had never inspired the same feelings of horror and awe. It was impossible to forget that they might at any moment be breathing into their lungs the same deadly poison which was carrying off multitudes on every side, and although there was no conscious fear for themselves in the thought, it could not but fill them with a quickened perception of the uncertainty of life and the unreality of things terrestrial.
In perfect silence the walk towards the little town was accomplished; and as they neared it terrible sights began to reveal themselves even along the roadside. Plainly indeed to be seen were evidences of attempted flight from the plague-stricken place; and no doubt many had made good their escape, but others had fallen down by the wayside in a dying state, and these dead or dying sufferers were the first tokens observed by the travellers of the condition of the town.
Not all were dead, though most were plainly hopeless cases. Raymond and Roger had both learned something during the hours of the previous night, when they had helped the good Brothers over their tasks; and they fearlessly knelt beside the poor creatures, moistening their parched lips, answering their feeble, moaning plaints, and summoning to the side of the dying the Father, who could hear the feeble confession of sin, and pronounce the longed-for absolution to the departing soul.
Passing still onwards -- for they could not linger long, and little enough could be done for these dying sufferers, all past hope -- they reached the streets of the town itself; and the first sight which greeted their eyes was the figure of a man stripped naked to the waist, his back bleeding from the blows he kept on inflicting upon himself with the thick, knotted cord he held in his hands, a heavy and rough piece of iron being affixed to the end to make the blows more severe. From the waist downwards he was clothed with sackcloth, and as he rushed about the streets shrieking and castigating himself, he called aloud on the people to repent of their sins, and to flee from the wrath of God that was falling upon the whole nation.
Yet, though many dead and dying were lying in the streets about him, and though cries and groans from many houses told that the destroyer was at work there, this Flagellant (as these maniacs, of which at that time there were only too many abroad, were called) never attempted to touch one of them, though he ran almost over their prostrate bodies, and had apparently no fear of the contagion. There were very few people abroad in the streets, and such as were sound kept their faces covered with cloths steeped in vinegar or some other pungent mixture, and walked gingerly in the middle of the road, as if afraid to approach either the houses on each side or the other persons walking in the streets.
A cart was going about, with two evil-looking men in it, who lifted in such of the dead as they found lying by the roadside, and coolly divested them of anything of any value which they chanced to have upon them before conveying them to the great pit just outside which had been dug to receive the victims of the plague.
A wild panic had seized upon the place. Most of the influential inhabitants had fled. There was no rule or order or oversight observed, and the priest of the church, who until this day had kept a certain watch over his flock, and had gone about encouraging and cheering the people, had himself been stricken down with the fell malady, and no one knew whether he were now living or dead.
As the Father passed by, people rushed out from many doors to implore him to come to this house or the other, to administer the last rites to some one dying within. There were other houses marked with a red cross on the doors, which had been for many days closed by the town authorities, until these had themselves fled, being assured that no person could live in that polluted air. What had become of the wretched beings thus shut up, when the watchers who were told off to guard them had fled in terror, it was hard to imagine; and whilst the Father responded to the calls of those who required spiritual assistance at the last dread hour, Raymond beckoned to Roger to follow him in his visitation to those places where the distemper had first showed itself, and where people had hoped to confine it by closing the houses and letting none go forth.
The terribly deadly nature of the malady was well exemplified by the condition of these houses. Scarce ten living souls were found in them, and of these almost all were reduced to the last extremity either by disease or hunger; for none had been nigh them, and they had no strength to try to make their wants known.
Raymond had the satisfaction of seeing some amongst these wretched beings revive somewhat under his ministrations. It was not in every case the real distemper from which they suffered; in not a few the patients had sunk only from fright and the misery of feeling themselves shut away from their fellows. Whenever any persons ailed anything in those days, it was at once supposed that the Black Death was upon them, and they were shunned and abhorred by all their friends and kindred. To these poor creatures it seemed indeed as though an angel from heaven had come down when Raymond bent over them and put food and drink to their lips. Many an office of loving mercy to the sick and dying did he and Roger perform ere daylight faded from the sky; and before night actually fell, the Father had by precept and example got together a band of helpers ready and willing to tend the sick and bury the dead, and the people felt that the terrible panic which had fallen upon them, and caused every one to flee away, had given place to something better and more humane.
Men who had fled their stricken homes and had spent their time carousing in the taverns, trying to drown their fears and their griefs, now returned home to see how it fared with those who had been left behind. Women who had been almost distracted by grief, and had been rushing into the church sobbing and crying, and neglecting the sick, that they might pour out their hearts at the shrine of their favourite saint, were admonished by the Holy Father, so well known to them, to return to their homes and their duties. As the pall of night fell over the stricken city, and the three who had entered it a few hours before still toiled on without cessation, people breathed blessings on them wherever they appeared, and Raymond felt that his work for the Lord in the midst of His stricken people had indeed begun.
"Thou to Guildford then, my son, and I and the Brethren to London."
So said Father Paul some three weeks later, as he stood once again inside the precincts of the Monastery, with Raymond by his side, looking round the thinned circle of faces of such of the Brothers as had survived the terrible visitation which had passed over them, and now gone, as it seemed, elsewhere. Quite one-half of the inhabitants of that small retreat had fallen victims to the scourge. Scarce ten souls out of all those who had sought shelter within those walls had risen from their beds and gone forth to their desolated homes again. The great trench in the burying ground had received the rest; and of the Brothers who gathered round Father Paul to welcome him back, several showed, by their pinched and stricken appearance, how near they themselves had been to the gates of death.
Few stricken by the fatal sickness itself ever recovered; but there were many others who, falling ill of overwork or some other feverish ailment, were accounted to have caught the distemper, and many of these did amend, though all sickness at such a time seemed to get a firmer hold upon its victims. But Father Paul and both his young assistants had escaped unscathed, though they had been waging a hand-to-hand fight with the destroyer for three long weeks, that seemed years in the retrospect.
The Brothers came crowding round them as about those returned from the grave. Indeed, to them it did almost seem as though this was a resurrection from the dead; for they had long since given up all hope of seeing their beloved Superior and Father again in the flesh.
But the Father himself only accounted his work begun. Although the pestilence appeared to have passed from the immediate district, and such cases as occurred amid the few survivors of the visitation were by no means so fatal as they had been in the beginning, yet the sickness itself in its most virulent form was sweeping along northward and eastward, spreading death and desolation in its track; and Father Paul had but one purpose in his mind, which was to follow in the path of the destroyer, performing for the sufferers wherever he went the same offices of piety and mercy that he had been wont to undertake all these past days; and the Brothers, who had finished their labour of love within the walls of their home, and had grown fearless before the pestilence with that fearlessness which gradually comes to those who look long and steadily upon death, were not wanting in resolve to face it even in its most terrible shape.
So that they one and all vowed that they would go with Father Paul; and his steps were bound for the capital of the kingdom, where he knew that the need would be the sorest.
It seemed to the Brothers, who had long lived beneath his austere but wise and fatherly rule, that not only did he himself bear a charmed life, but that all who worked with him felt the shelter of that charm. Raymond and Roger had returned, having suffered no ill effects from the terrible sights and scenes through which they had passed. Though the country in these almost depopulated districts literally reeked with the pestilence, owing to the effluvia from the carcasses of men and beasts which lay rotting on the ground unburied, yet they had passed unscathed through all, and were ready to go forth again upon the same errand of mercy.
Raymond was much divided in mind as to his own course of action. Much as he longed to remain with Father Paul, whom he continued to revere with a loving admiration that savoured of worship, he yet had a great desire to know how it was faring with his cousin John. He could not but be very sure that the pestilence would not pass Guildford by, and he knew that John would go forth amongst the sick and dying, and bring them into his own house for tendance, even though his own life paid the forfeit. It was therefore with no small eagerness that he longed for news of him; and when he spoke of this to the Father, the latter at once advised that they should part company -- he and such of the Brethren as were fit for the journey travelling on to London, whilst the two youths took the direct road to Guildford, to see how matters fared there.
"Ye are but striplings," said the Father kindly, "and though ye be willing and devoted, ye have not the strength of men, nor are ye such seasoned vessels. In London the scenes will be terrible to look upon. It may be that they would be more than ye could well brook. Go, then, to Guildford. They will need helpers there who know how best to wrestle with the foul distemper, and ye have both learned many lessons with me. I verily believe that your work lies there, as mine lies yonder. Go then, and the Lord be with you. It may be we shall meet again in this world, but if not, in that world beyond into which our Blessed Saviour has passed, that through His intercession, offered unceasingly for us, we too may obtain an entrance through the merits of His redeeming Blood."
Then blessing both the boys and embracing them with a tenderness new in one generally so reserved and austere, he sent them away, and they set their faces steadily whence they had come, not knowing what adventures they might meet upon the way.
This return journey was by no means so rapid as the ride hither had been. Both the horses they had then ridden had perished of the sickness, and as none others were to be found, and had they been obtainable might but have fallen down by the wayside to die, the youths travelled on foot. And they did not even take the most direct route, but turned aside to this place or the other, wherever they knew of the existence of human habitations; for wherever such places were, there might there be need for human help and sympathy. And not a few acts of mercy did the boys perform as they travelled slowly onwards through an almost depopulated region.
Time fails to tell of all they saw and heard as they thus journeyed; but they found ample employment for all their skill and energy. The lives of many little children, whose parents had died or fled, were saved by them, and the neglected little orphans left in the kindly care of some devoted Sisterhood, whose inmates gladly received them, fearless of the risk they might run by so doing.
Wandering so often out of their way, they scarce knew their exact whereabouts when darkness fell upon them on the third day of their journeying; but after walking still onwards for some time in what they judged to be the right direction, they presently saw a light in a cottage window, and knocking at the door, asked shelter for the night.
Travellers at such a time as this were regarded with no small suspicion, and the youths hardly looked to get any answer to their request; but rather to their surprise, the door was quickly opened, and Roger uttered a cry of recognition as he looked in the face of the master of the house.
It was no other, in fact, than the ranger with whom as a boy he had found a temporary home, from which home he had been taken in his father's absence and sold into the slavery of Basildene. The boy's cry of astonishment was echoed by the man when once he had made sure that his senses were not deceiving him, but that it was really little Roger, whom he had long believed to be dead; and both he and his companion were eagerly welcomed in and set down to a plentiful meal of bread and venison pasty, whilst the boy told his long and adventurous story as briefly as he could, Stephen listening with parted lips and staring eyes, as if to the recital of some miraculous narrative.
And in truth the tale was strange enough, told in its main aspects: the escape from Basildene, which to himself always partook of the nature of a miracle, the conflict with the powers of darkness in the Monastery, his adventures in France, and now his marvellous escape in the midst of the plague-stricken people whom he had tended and helped. The ranger, who had lost his own wife and children in the distemper, and had himself escaped, had lost all fear of the contagion --indeed he cared little whether he lived or died; and when he heard upon what errand the youths were bent, he declared he would gladly come with them, for the solitude of his cottage was so oppressive to him that he would have welcomed even a plague-stricken guest sooner than be left much longer with only his hounds and his own thoughts for company.
"If I cannot tend the sick, I can at least bury the dead," he said, drawing his horny hand across his eyes, remembering for whom he had but lately performed that last sad office. And Raymond, to whom this offer was addressed, accepted his company gladly, for he knew by recent experience how great was the need for helpers where the sick and the dead so far outnumbered the whole and sound.
He had gone off into a reverie as he sat by the peat fire, whilst Roger and the ranger continued talking together eagerly of many matters, and he heard little of what passed until roused by the name of Basildene spoken more than once, and he commanded his drowsy and wearied faculties to listen to what the ranger was saying.
"Yes, the Black Death has found its way in behind those walls, men say. The old sorcerer tried all his black arts to keep it out; but there came by one this morning who told me that the old man had been seized, and was lying without a soul to go near him. They have but two servants that have ever stayed with them in that vile place, and these both thought the old man's dealings with the devil would at least suffice to keep the scourge away, and felt themselves safer there than elsewhere. But the moment he was seized they both ran away and left him, and there they say he is lying still, untended and unwatched -- if he be not dead by now. For as for the son, he had long since made his own preparations. He has shut himself up in a turret, with a plentiful supply of food; and he burns a great fire of scented wood and spices at the foot of the stairway, and another in the place he lives in, and never means to stir forth until the distemper has passed. One of the servants, before he fled, went to the stair foot and called to him to tell him that his father lay a-dying of the plague below; but he only laughed, and said it was time he went to the devil, who had been waiting so long for him; and the man rushed out of the house in affright at the sound of such terrible blasphemy and unnatural wickedness at a time like this."
Raymond's face took a new expression as he heard these words. The lassitude and weariness passed out of it, and a curious light crept into his eyes. Roger and the ranger continued to talk together of many things, but their silent companion still sat motionless beside the hearth. Over his face was stealing a look of purpose -- such purpose as follows a struggle of the spirit over natural distaste and disgust.
When the ranger presently left them, to see what simple preparations he could make for their comfort during the night, he motioned to Roger to come nearer, and looking steadily at him, he said:
"Roger, I am going to Basildene tonight, to see what human skill may do for the old Sanghurst. He is our enemy -- thine and mine -- therefore doubly is it our duty to minister to him in the hour of his extremity. I go forth this night to seek him. Wilt thou go with me? or dost thou fear to fall again under the sway of his evil mind, or his son's, if thou puttest foot within the halls of Basildene again?"
For a moment a look of strong repulsion crossed Roger's face. He shrank back a little, and looked as though he would have implored his young master to reconsider his resolution. But something in the luminous glance of those clear bright eyes restrained him, and presently some of their lofty purpose seemed to be infused into his own soul.
"If thou goest, I too will go," he said. "At thy side no harm from the Evil One can come nigh me. Have I not proved that a hundred times ere now? And the spell has long been broken off my neck and off my spirit. I fear neither the sorcerer nor his son. If it be for us -- if it be a call -- to go even to him in the hour of his need, I will go without a thought of fear. I go in the name of the Holy Virgin and her Son. I need not fear what man can do against me."
Great was the astonishment of the worthy ranger when he returned to hear the purpose upon which his guests were bent; but he had already imbibed some of that strange reverential admiration for Raymond which he so frequently inspired in those about him, and it did not for a moment occur to him to attempt to dissuade him from an object upon which his mind was bent.
The October night, though dark and moonless, was clear, and the stars were shining in the sky as the little procession started forth. The ranger insisted on being one of the number. Partly from curiosity, partly from sheer hatred of solitude, and a good deal from interest in his companions and their errand of mercy, he had decided to come with them, not merely to show them the way to Basildene, which he could find equally well by night as by day, but to see the result of their journey there, and take on with him to Guildford the description of the old sorcerer's home and his seizure there.
As they moved along through the whispering wood, the man, in low and awe-stricken tones, asked Roger of his old life there, and what it was that made him of such value to the Sanghursts. Raymond had never talked to the lad of that chapter in his past life, always abiding by Father Paul's advice to let him forget it as far as possible.
Now, however, Roger seemed able to speak of it calmly, and without the terror and emotion that any recollection of that episode used to cause him in past years. He could talk now of the strange trances into which he was thrown, and how he was made to see things at a distance and tell all he saw. Generally it was travellers upon the road he was instructed to watch, and forced to describe the contents of the mails they carried with them. Some instinct made the boy many times struggle hard against revealing the nature of the valuables he saw that these people had about them, knowing well how they would be plundered by his rapacious masters, after they had tempted them upon the treacherous swamp not far from Basildene, where, if they escaped with their lives, it would be as much as they could hope to do. But the truth was always wrung from him by suffering at last -- not that his body was in any way injured by them, save by the prolonged fasts inflicted upon him to intensify his gift of clairvoyance; but whilst in these trances they could make him believe that any sort of pain was being inflicted, and he suffered it exactly as though it had been actually done upon his bodily frame. Thus they forced from his reluctant lips every item of information they desired; and he knew when plunder was brought into the house, and stored in the deep underground cellars, how and whence it had come -- knew, too, that many and many a wretched traveller had been overwhelmed in the swamp who might have escaped with life and goods but for him.
It was the horror of this conviction, and the firm belief that he had been bound over body and soul to Satan, that was killing him by inches when the twin brothers effected his rescue. He did not always remember clearly in his waking moments what had passed in his hours of trance, but the horror of great darkness always remained with him; and at some moments everything would come upon him with a fearful rush, and he would remain stupefied and overwhelmed with anguish.
To all of this Raymond listened with great interest. He and John had read of some such phenomena in their books relating to the history of magic; and little as the hypnotic state was understood in those days, the young student had gained some slight insight into the matter, and was able to speak of his convictions to Roger with some assurance. He told him that though he verily believed such power over the wills of others to be in some sort the work of the devil, it might yet be successfully withstood by a resolute will, bound over to the determination to yield nothing to the strong and evil wills of others. And Roger, who had long since fought his fight and gained strength and confidence, was not afraid of venturing into the stronghold of wickedness -- less so than ever now that he might go at Raymond's side.
It was midnight before the lonely house was reached, and Raymond's heart beat high as he saw the outline of the old walls looming up against the gloomy sky. Not a light was to be seen burning in any of the windows, save a single gleam from out the turret at the corner away to the left; and though owls hooted round the place, and bats winged their uncertain flight, no other living thing was to be seen, and the silence of death seemed to brood over the house.
"This is the way to the door that is the only one used," said Stephen, "and we shall find it unlocked for certain, seeing that the servants have run away, and the young master will not go nigh his father, not though he were ten times dying. My lantern will guide us surely enough through the dark passages, and maybe young Roger will know where the old man is like to be found."
"Below stairs, I doubt not, amongst his bottles and books of magic," answered Roger, with a light shiver, as he passed through the doorway and found himself once again within the evil house. "He would think that in yon place no contagion could touch him. He spent his days and nights alike there. He scarce left it save to go abroad, or perchance to have a few hours' sleep in his bed. But the treasure is buried somewhere nigh at hand down in those cellars, though the spot I know not. And he fears to leave it night or day, lest some stealthy hand filch away the ill-gotten gain. Men thought he had the secret whereby all might be changed to gold, and indeed he would ofttimes bring pure gold out from the crucibles over his fire; but he had cast in first, unknown to those who so greedily watched him, the precious baubles he had stolen from travellers upon the road. He was a very juggler with his hands. I have watched him a thousand times at tricks which would have made the fortune of a travelling mountebank. But soft! here is the door at the head of the stairs. Take heed how that is opened, lest the hound fly at thy throat. Give me the lantern, and have thou thy huntsman's knife to plunge into his throat, else he may not let us pass down alive."
But when the door was opened, the hound, instead of growling or springing, welcomed them with whines of eager welcome. The poor beast was almost starved, and had been tamed by hunger to unwonted gentleness.
Raymond, who had food in his wallet, fed him with small pieces as they cautiously descended the stairs, for Basildene would furnish them with more if need be; the larder and cellar there were famous in their way, though few cared to accept of their owner's hospitality.
Roger almost expected to find the great door of that subterranean room bolted and locked, so jealous was its owner of entrance being made there; but it yielded readily to the touch, and the three, with the hound, passed in together.
In a moment Raymond knew by the peculiar atmosphere, which even in so large a place was sickly and fetid, that they were in the presence of one afflicted with the true distemper. The place was in total darkness save for the light of the lantern the ranger carried; but there were lamps in sconces all along the wall, and these Roger quickly lighted, being familiar enough with this underground place, which it had been part of his duty to see to. The light from these lamps was pure and white and very bright, and lit up the weird vaulted chamber from end to end. It shone upon a stiffened figure lying prone upon the floor not far from the vaulted fireplace, upon whose hearth the embers lay black and cold; and Raymond, springing suddenly forward as his glance rested upon this figure, feared that he had come too late, and that the foe of his house had passed beyond the power of human aid.
"Help me to lift him," he said to Stephen; "and, Roger, kindle thou a fire upon the hearth. There may be life in him yet. We will try what we know. Yes, methinks his heart beats faintly; and the tokens of the distemper are plainly out upon him. Perchance he may yet live. Of late I have seen men rise up from their beds whom we have given up for lost."
Raymond was beginning to realize that the black boils, so often looked upon as the death tokens, were by no means in reality anything of the kind. As a matter of fact, of the cases that recovered, most, if not all, had the plague spots upon them. These boils were, in fact, nature's own effort at expelling the virulent poison from the system, and if properly treated by mild methods and poultices, in some cases really brought relief, so that the patient eventually recovered.
But the intensity of the poison, and its rapid action upon the human organs, made cases of recovery rare indeed at the outset, when the outbreak always came in its most virulent form; and truly the appearance of old Peter Sanghurst was such as almost to preclude hope of restoration. Tough as he was in constitution, the glaze of death seemed already in his eyes. He was all but pulseless and as cold as death, whilst the spasmodic twitchings of his limbs when he was lifted spoke of death rather than life.
Still Raymond would not give up hope. He had the fire kindled, and it soon blazed up hot and fierce, whilst the old man was wrapped in a rich furred cloak which Roger produced from a cupboard, and some hot cordial forced between his lips. After one or two spasmodic efforts which might have been purely muscular, he appeared to make an attempt to swallow, and in a few more minutes it became plain that he was really doing so, and with increasing ease each time. The blood began to run through his veins again, the chest heaved, and the breath was drawn in long, labouring gasps. At last the old man's eyes opened, and fixed themselves upon Raymond's face with a long, bewildered stare.
They asked him no questions. They had no desire that he should speak. His state was critical in the extreme. They had but come to minister to his stricken body. To cope with a mind such as his was a task that Raymond felt must be far beyond his own powers. He would have given much to have had Father Paul at this bedside for one brief hour, the more so as he saw the shrinking and terror creeping over the drawn, ashen face. Did his guilty soul know itself to be standing on the verge of eternity? and did the wretched man feel the horror of great darkness infolding him already?
All at once he spoke, and his words were like a cry of terror.
"Alicia! Alicia! how comest thou here?"
Raymond, to whom the words were plainly addressed, knew not how to answer them, or what they could mean; but the wild eyes were still fixed upon his face, and again the old man's excited words broke forth -- "Comest thou in this dread hour to claim thine own again? Alicia, Alicia! I do repent of my robbery. I would fain restore all. It has been a curse, and not a blessing; all has been against me -- all. I was a happy man before I unlawfully wrested Basildene from thee. Since I have done that deed naught has prospered with me; and here I am left to die alone, neglected by all, and thou alone -- thy spirit from the dead -- comes to taunt me in my last hour with my robbery and my sin. O forgive, forgive! Thou art dead. Spirits cannot inherit this world's goods, else would I restore all to thee. Tell me what I may do to make amends ere I die? But look not at me with those great eyes of thine, lightened with the fire of the Lord. I cannot bear it -- I cannot bear it! Tell me only how I may make restoration ere I am taken hence to meet my doom!"
Raymond understood then. The old man mistook him for his mother, who must have been about his own age when her wicked kinsman had ousted her from her possessions. Had they not told him in the old home how wondrous like to her he was growing? The clouded vision of the old man could see nothing but the face of the youth bending over him, and to him it was the face of an avenging angel. He clasped his hands together in an agony of supplication, and would have cast himself at the boy's feet had he not been restrained. The terrible remorse which so often falls upon a guilty conscience at the last hour had the miserable man in its clutches. His mind was too far weakened to think of his many crimes even blacker than this one. The sight of Raymond had awakened within him the memory of the defrauded woman, and he could think of nothing else. She had come back from the dead to put him in mind of his sin. If he could but make one act of restitution, he felt that he could almost die in peace. He gripped Raymond's hand hard, and looked with agonizing intensity into his face.
"I am not Alicia," he answered gently. "Her spirit is at rest and free, and no thought of malice or hatred could come from her now. I am her son. I know all -- how you drove her forth from Basildene, and made yourself an enemy; but you are an enemy no longer now, for the hand of God is upon you, and I am here in His name to strive to soothe your last hours, and point the way upwards whither she has gone."
"Alicia's son! Alicia's son!" almost screamed the old man. "Now Heaven be praised, for I can make restitution of all!"
Raymond raised his eyes suddenly at an exclamation from Roger, to see a tall dark figure standing motionless in the doorway, whilst Peter Sanghurst's fiery eyes were fixed upon his face with a gaze of the most deadly malevolence in them.
"The sickness in the town! Alackaday! Woe betide us all! It will be next within our very walls. Holy St. Catherine protect us! May all the Saints have mercy upon us! In Guildford! why, that is scarce five short miles away! And all the men and the wenches are flying as for dear life, though if what men say be true there be few enough places left to fly to! Why, Joan, why answerest thou not? I might as well speak to a block as to thee. Dost understand, girl, that the Black Death is at our very doors -- that all our people are flying from us? And yet thou sittest there with thy book, as though this were a time for idle fooling. I am fair distraught -- thy father and brother away and all! Canst thou not say something? Hast thou no feeling for thy mother? Here am I nigh distracted by fear and woe, and thou carriest about a face as calm as if this deadly scourge were but idle rumour."
Joan laid down her book, came across to her mother, and put her strong hand caressingly upon her shoulder. Poor, weak, timid Lady Vavasour had never been famed for strength of mind in any of the circumstances of life, and it was perhaps not wonderful that this scare, reaching her ears in her husband's absence, should drive her nearly frantic with terror.
For many days reports of a most disquieting nature had been pouring in. Persons who came to Woodcrych on business or pleasure spoke of nothing but the approach of the Black Death. Some affected to make light of it, protested that far too much was being made of the statements of ignorant and terrified people, and asserted boldly that it would not attack the well-fed and prosperous classes; whilst others declared that the whole country would speedily be depopulated, and whispered gruesome tales of those scenes of death and horror which were shortly to become so common. Then the inhabitants of isolated houses like Woodcrych received visits from travelling peddlers and mountebanks of all sorts, many disguised in Oriental garb, who brought with them terrible stories of the spread of the distemper, at the same time offering for sale certain herbs and simples which they declared to be never-failing remedies in case any person were attacked by the disease; or else they besought the credulous to purchase amulets or charms, or in some cases alleged relics blessed by the Pope, which if always worn upon the person would effectually prevent the onset of the malady. After listening greedily (as the servants in those houses always loved to do) to any story of ghastly horror which these impostors chose to tell them, they were thankful to buy at almost any price some antidote against the fell disease; and even Lady Vavasour had made many purchases for herself and her daughter of quack medicines and talismans or relics.
But hitherto no one had dared to whisper how fast the distemper was encroaching in this very district. Men still spoke of it as though it were far off, and might likely enough die out without spreading, so that now it was with terror akin to distraction that the poor lady heard through her servants that it had well-nigh reached their own doors. One of the lackeys had had occasion to ride over to the town that very day, and had come back with the news that people there were actually dying in the streets. He had seen two men fall down, either dead or stricken for death, before he could turn his beast away and gallop off, and the shops were shut and the church bell was tolling, whilst all men looked in each other's faces as if afraid of what they might see there.
Sir Hugh and his son were far away from Woodcrych at one of their newer possessions some forty miles distant, and in their absence Lady Vavasour felt doubly helpless. She shook off Joan's hand, and recommenced her agitated pacing. Her daughter's calmness was incomprehensible apathy to her. It fretted her even to see it.
"Thou hast no feeling, Joan; thou hast a heart of stone," she cried, bursting into weak weeping. "Why canst thou not give me help or counsel of some sort? What are we to do? What is to become of us? Wouldst have us all stay shut up in this miserable place to die together?"
Joan did not smile at the feeble petulance of the half-distracted woman. Indeed it was no time for smiles of any sort. The peril around and about was a thing too real and too fearful in its character to admit of any lightness of speech; and the girl did not even twit her mother with the many sovereign remedies purchased as antidotes against infection, though her own disbelief in these had brought down many laments from Lady Vavasour but a few days previously.
Brought face to face with the reality of the peril, these wonderful medicines did not inspire the confidence the sanguine purchasers had hoped when they spent their money upon them. Lady Vavasour's hope seemed now to lie in flight and flight alone. She was one of those persons whose instinct is always for flight, whatever the danger to be avoided; and now she was eagerly urging upon Joan the necessity for immediate departure, regardless of the warning of her calmer-minded daughter that probably the roads would be far more full of peril than their own house could ever be, if they strictly shut it up, lived upon the produce of their own park and dairy, and suffered none to go backwards and forwards to bring the contagion with them.
Whether Joan's common-sense counsel would have ever prevailed over the agitated panic of her mother is open to doubt, but all chance of getting Lady Vavasour to see reason was quickly dissipated by a piece of news brought to the mother and daughter by a white-faced, shivering servant.
The message was that the lackey who had but lately returned from Guildford, whilst sitting over the kitchen fire with his cup of mead, had complained of sudden and violent pains, had vomited and fallen down upon the floor in a fit; whereat every person present had fled in wild dismay, perfectly certain that he had brought home the distemper with him, and that every creature in the house was in deadly peril.
Lady Vavasour's terror and agitation were pitiful to see. In vain Joan strove to soothe and quiet her. She would listen to no words of comfort. Not another hour would she remain in that house. The servants, some of whom had already fled, were beginning to take the alarm in good earnest, and were packing up their worldly goods, only anxious to be gone. Horses and pack horses were being already prepared, for Lady Vavasour had given half-a-dozen orders for departure before she had made up her mind what to do or where to go.
Now she was resolved to ride straight to her husband, without drawing rein, or exchanging a word with any person upon the road. Such of the servants as wished to accompany her might do so; the rest might do as they pleased. Her one idea was to be gone, and that as quickly as possible.
She hurried away to change her dress for her long ride, urging Joan to lose not a moment in doing the same; but what was her dismay on her return to find her daughter still in her indoor dress, though she was forwarding her mother's departure by filling the saddlebags with provisions for the way, and laying strict injunctions upon the trusty old servants who were about to travel with her to give every care to their mistress, and avoid so far as was possible any place where there was likelihood of catching the contagion. They were to bait the horses in the open, and not to take them under any roof, and all were to carry their own victuals and drink with them. But that she herself was not to make one of the party was plainly to be learned by these many and precise directions.
This fact became patent to the mother directly she came downstairs, and at once she broke into the most incoherent expression of dismay and terror; but Joan, after letting her talk for a few minutes to relieve her feelings, spoke her answer in brief, decisive sentences.
"Mother, it is impossible for me to go. Old Bridget, as you know, is ill. It is not the distemper, it is one of the attacks of illness to which she has been all her life subject; but not one of these foolish wenches will now go near her. She has nursed and tended me faithfully from childhood. To leave her here alone in this great house, to live or die as she might, is impossible. Here I remain till she is better. Think not of me and fear not for me. I have no fears for myself. Go to our father; he will doubtless be anxious for news of us. Linger not here. Men say that those who fear the distemper are ever the first victims. Farewell, and may health and safety be with you. My place is here, and here I will remain till I see my way before me."
Lady Vavasour wept and lamented, but did not delay her own departure on account of her obstinate daughter. She gave Joan up for lost, but she would not stay to share her fate. She had already seen something of the quiet firmness of the girl, which her father sometimes cursed as stubbornness, and she felt that words would only be thrown away upon her. Lamenting to the last, she mounted her palfrey, and set her train of servants in motion; whilst Joan stood upon the top step of the flight to the great door, and waved her hand to her mother till the cortege disappeared down the drive. A brave and steadfast look was upon her face, and the sigh she heaved as she turned at last away seemed one of relief rather than of sorrow.
Lonely as might be her situation in this deserted house, it could not but be a relief to her to feel that her timid mother would shortly be under the protection of her husband, and more at rest than she could ever hope to be away from his side. He could not keep the distemper at bay, but he could often quiet the restless plaints and causeless terrors of his weak-minded spouse.
As she turned back into the silent house she was aware of two figures in the great hall that were strange there, albeit she knew both well as belonging to two of the oldest retainers of the place, an old man and his wife, who had lived the best part of their lives in Sir Hugh's service at Woodcrych.
"Why, Betty -- and you also, Andrew -- what do ye here?" asked Joan, with a grave, kindly smile at the aged couple.
With many humble salutations and apologies the old folks explained that they had heard of the hasty and promiscuous flight of the whole household, headed by the mistress, and also that the "sweet young lady" was left all alone because she refused to leave old Bridget; and that they had therefore ventured to come up to the great house to offer their poor services, to wait upon her and to do for her all that lay in their power, and this not for her only, but for the two sick persons already in the house.
"For, as I do say to my wife there," said old Andrew, though he spoke in a strange rustic fashion that would scarce be intelligible to our modern ears, "a body can but die once; and for aught I see, one might as easy die of the Black Death as of the rheumatics that sets one's bones afire, and cripples one as bad as being in one's coffin at once. So I be a-going to look to poor Willum, as they say is lying groaning still upon the kitchen floor, none having dared to go anigh him since he fell down in a fit. And if I be took tending on him, I know that you will take care of my old woman, and see that she does not want for bread so long as she lives."
Joan put out her soft, strong hand and laid it upon the hard, wrinkled fist of the old servant. There was a suspicious sparkle in her dark eyes.
"I will not disappoint that expectation, good Andrew," she said. "Go if you will, whilst we think what may best be done for Bridget. Later on I will come myself to look at William. I have no fear of the distemper; and of one thing I am very sure -- that it is never kept away by being fled from and avoided. I have known travellers who have seen it, and have been with the sick, and have never caught the contagion, whilst many fled from it in terror only to be overtaken and struck down as they so ran. We are in God's hands -- forsaken of all but Him. Let us trust in His mercy, do our duty calmly and firmly, and leave the rest to Him."
Later in the day, upheld by this same lofty sense of calmness and trust, Joan, after doing all in her power to make comfortable the old nurse, who was terribly distressed at hearing how her dear young lady had been deserted, left her to the charge of Betty, and went down again through the dark and silent house to the great kitchen, where William was still to be found, reclining now upon a settle beside the glowing hearth, and looking not so very much the worse for the seizure of the afternoon.
"I do tell he it were but the colic," old Andrew declared, rubbing his crumpled hands together in the glow of the fire. "He were in a rare fright when I found he -- groaning out that the Black Death had hold of he, and that he were a dead man; but I told he that he was the liveliest corpse as I'd set eyes on this seventy years; and so after a bit he heartened up, and found as he could get upon his feet after all. It were naught but the colic in his inside; and he needn't be afraid of nothing worse."
Old Andrew proved right. William's sudden indisposition had been but the result of fright and hard riding, followed by copious draughts of hot beer taken with a view to keeping away the contagion. Very soon he was convinced of this himself; and when he understood how the whole household had fled from him, and that the only ones who had stayed to see that he did not die alone and untended were these old souls and their adored young lady, his heart was filled with loving gratitude and devotion, and he lost no opportunity of doing her service whenever it lay in his power.
Strange and lonely indeed was the life led by those five persons shut up in that large house, right away from all sights and sounds from the world without. The silence and the solitude at last became well-nigh intolerable, and when Bridget had recovered from her attack of illness and was going about briskly again, Joan took the opportunity of speaking her mind to her fully and freely.
"Why do we remain shut up within these walls, when there is so much work to be done in the world? Bridget, thou knowest that I love not my life as some love it. Often it seems to me as though by death alone I may escape a frightful doom. All around us our fellow creatures are dying -- too often alone and untended, like dogs in a ditch. Good Bridget, I have money in the house, and we have health and strength and courage; and thou art an excellent good nurse in all cases of sickness. Thou hast taught me some of thy skill, and I long to show it on behalf of these poor stricken souls, so often deserted by their nearest and dearest in the hour of their deadliest peril. If I go, wilt thou go with me? I trow that thou art a brave woman --"
"And if I were not thou wouldst shame me into bravery, Sweetheart," answered the old woman fondly, as she looked into the earnest face of her young mistress. "I too have been thinking of the poor stricken souls. I would gladly risk the peril in such a labour of love. As old Andrew says, we can but die once. The Holy Saints will surely look kindly upon those who die at their post, striving to do as they would have done had they been here with us upon earth."
And when William heard what his young mistress was about to do, he declared that he too would go with her, and assist with the offices to the sick or the dead. He still had a vivid recollection of the moments when he had believed himself left alone to die of the distemper; and fellow feeling and generosity getting the better of his first unreasoning terror, he was as eager as Joan herself to enter upon this labour of love. Bridget, who was a great botanist, in the practical fashion of many old persons in those days, knew more about the properties of herbs than anybody in the country round, and she made a great selection from her stores, and brewed many pungent concoctions which she gave to her young mistress and William to drink, to ward off any danger from infection. She also gave them, to hang about their necks, bags containing aromatic herbs, whose strong and penetrating odour dominated all others, and was likely enough to do good in purifying the atmosphere about the wearer.
There was no foolish superstition in Bridget's belief in her simples. She did not regard them as charms; but she had studied their properties and had learned their value, and knew them to possess valuable properties for keeping the blood pure, and so rendering much smaller any chance of imbibing the poison.
At dusk that same evening, William, who had been out all day, returned, and requested speech of his young mistress. He was ushered into the parlour where she sat, with her old nurse for her companion; and standing just within the threshold he told his tale.
"I went across to the town today. I thought I would see if there was any lodging to be had where you, fair Mistress, might conveniently abide whilst working in that place. Your worshipful uncle's house I found shut up and empty, not a soul within the doors -- all fled, as most of the better sort of the people are fled, and every window and door fastened up. Half the houses, too, are marked with black or red crosses, to show that those within are afflicted with the distemper. There are watchmen in the streets, striving to keep within their doors all such as have the Black Death upon them; but these be too few for the task, and the maddened wretches are continually breaking out, and running about the streets crying and shouting, till they drop down in a fit, and lie there, none caring for them. By day there be dead and dying in every street; but at night a cart comes and carries the corpses off to the great grave outside the town."
"And is there no person to care for the sick in all the town?" asked Joan, with dilating eyes.
"There were many monks at first; but the distemper seized upon them worse than upon the townfolks, and now there is scarce one left. Soon after the distemper broke out, Master John de Brocas threw open his house to receive all stricken persons who would come thither to be tended, and it has been full to overflowing night and day ever since. I passed by the house as I came out, and around the door there were scores of wretched creatures, all stricken with the distemper, praying to be taken in. And I saw Master John come out to them and welcome them in, lifting a little child from the arms of an almost dying woman, and leading her in by the hand. When I saw that, I longed to go in myself and offer myself to help in the work; but I thought my first duty was to you, sweet Mistress, and I knew if once I had told my tale you would not hold me back."
"Nay; and I will go thither myself, and Bridget with me," answered Joan, with kindling eyes. "We will start with the first light of the new-born day. They will want the help of women as well as of men within those walls.
"Good Bridget, look well to thy store of herbs, and take ample provision of all such as will allay fever and destroy the poison that works in the blood. For methinks there will be great work to be done by thee and me ere another sun has set; and every aid that nature can give us we will thankfully make use of."
"Your palfrey is yet in the stable, fair Mistress," said William, "and there be likewise the strong sorrel from the farm, whereupon Bridget can ride pillion behind me. Shall I have them ready at break of day tomorrow? We shall then gain the town before the day's work has well begun."
"Do so," answered Joan, with decision. "I would fain have started by night; but it will be wiser to tarry for the light of day. Good William, I thank thee for thy true and faithful service. We are going forth to danger and perchance to death; but we go in a good cause, and we have no need to fear."
And when William had retired, she turned to Bridget with shining eyes, and said:
"Ah, did I not always say that John was the truest knight of them all? The others have won their spurs; they have won the applause of men. They have all their lives looked down on John as one unable to wield a sword, one well-nigh unworthy of the ancient name he bears. But which of yon gay knights would have done what he is doing now? Who of all of them would stand forth fearless and brave in the teeth of this far deadlier peril than men ever face upon the battlefield? I trow not one of them would have so stood before a peril like this. They have left that for the true Knight of the Cross!"
At dawn next day Joan said adieu to her old home, and set her face steadily forward towards Guildford. The chill freshness of the November air was pleasant after the long period of oppressive warmth and closeness which had gone before, and now that the leaves had really fallen from the trees, there was less of the heavy humidity in the air that seemed to hold the germs of distemper and transmit them alike to man and beast.
The sun was not quite up as they started; but as they entered the silent streets of Guildford it was shining with a golden glory in strange contrast to the scenes upon which it would shortly have to look. Early morning was certainly the best time for Joan to enter the town, for the cart had been its round, the dead had been removed from the streets, and the houses were quieter than they often were later in the day. Once in a way a wild shriek or a burst of demoniacal laughter broke from some window; and once a girl, with hair flying wildly down her back, flew out of one of the houses sobbing and shrieking in a frenzy of terror, and was lost to sight down a side alley before Joan could reach her side.
Pursuing their way through the streets, they turned down the familiar road leading to John's house, and dismounting at the gate, Joan gave up her palfrey to William to seek stabling for it behind, and walked up with Bridget to the open door of the house.
That door was kept wide open night and day, and none who came were ever turned away. Joan entered the hall, to find great fires burning there, and round these fires were crowded shivering and moaning beings, some of the latest victims of the distemper, who had been brought within the hospitable shelter of that house of mercy, but who had not yet been provided with beds; for the numbers coming in day by day were even greater than the vacancies made by deaths constantly occurring in the wards (as they would now be called). Helpers were few, and of these one or another would be stricken down, and carried away to burial after a few hours' illness.
Of the wretched beings grouped about the fires several were little children, and Joan's heart went out in compassion to the suffering morsels of humanity. Taking a little moaning infant upon her knee, and letting two more pillow their weary beads against her dress, she signed to Bridget to remove her riding cloak, which she gently wrapped about the scantily-clothed form of a woman extended along the ground at her feet, to whom the children apparently belonged. The woman was dying fast, as her glazing eyes plainly showed.
Probably her case was altogether hopeless; but Joan was not yet seasoned to such scenes, and it seemed too terrible to sit by idle whilst a fellow creature actually died not two yards away. Surely somewhere within that house aid could be found. The girl rose gently from her seat, and still clasping the stricken infant in her arms, she moved towards one of the closed doors of the lower rooms.
Opening this softly, she looked in, and saw a row of narrow pallet beds down each side of the room, and every bed was tenanted. Sounds of moaning, the babble of delirious talk, and thickly-uttered cries for help or mercy now reached her ears, and the terrible breath of the plague for the first time smote upon her senses in all its full malignity. She recoiled for an instant, and clutched at the bag around her neck, which she was glad enough to press to her face.
A great fire was burning in the hearth, and all that could be done to lessen the evil had been accomplished. There was one attendant in this room, which was set apart for men, and he was just now bending over a delirious youth, striving to restrain his wild ravings and to induce him to remain in his bed. This attendant had his back to Joan, but she saw by his actions and his calm self possession that he was no novice to his task; and she walked softly through the pestilential place, feeling that she should not appeal to him for help in vain.
As the sound of the light, firm tread sounded upon the bare boards of the floor, the attendant suddenly lifted himself and turned round. Joan uttered a quick exclamation of surprise, which was echoed by the person in question.
"Raymond!" she exclaimed breathlessly.
"Joan! Thou here, and at such a time as this!"
And then they both stood motionless for a few long moments, feeling that despite the terrible scenes around and about them, the very gates of Paradise had opened before them, turning everything around them to gold.
The scourge had passed. It had swept over the length and breadth of the region of which Guildford formed the centre, and had done its terrible work of destruction there, leaving homes desolated and villages almost depopulated. It was still raging in London, and was hurrying northward and eastward with all its relentless energy and deadliness; but in most of the places thus left behind its work seemed to be fully accomplished, and there were no fresh cases.
People began to go about their business as of old. Those who had fled returned to their homes, and strove to take up the scattered threads of life as best they might. In many cases whole families had been swept out of existence; in others (more truly melancholy cases), one member had escaped when all the rest had perished. The religious houses were crowded with the helpless orphans of the sufferers in the epidemic, and the summer crops lay rotting in the fields for want of labourers to get them in.
John's house in Guildford had by this time reassumed its normal aspect. The last of the sick who had not been carried to the grave, but had recovered to return home, had now departed, with many a blessing upon the master, whose act of piety and charity had doubtless saved so many lives at this crisis. The work the young man had set himself to do had been nobly accomplished; but the task had been one beyond his feeble strength, and he now lay upon a couch of sickness, knowing well, if others did not, that his days were numbered.
He had fallen down in a faint upon the very day that the last patient had been able to leave his doors. For a moment it was feared that the poison of the distemper had fastened upon him; but it was not so. The attack was but due to the failure of the heart's action -- nature, tried beyond her powers of endurance, asserting herself at last -- and they laid him down in his old favourite haunt, with his books around him, having made the place look like it did before the house had been turned into a veritable hospital and mortuary.
When John opened his eyes at last it was to find Joan bending over him; and looking into her face with his sweet, tired smile, he said:
"You will not leave me, Joan?"
"No," she answered gently; "I will not leave you yet. Bridget and I will nurse you. All our other helpers are themselves worn out; but we have worked only a little while. We have not borne the burden and heat of that terrible day."
"You came in a good hour -- like angels of mercy that you were," said John, feeling, now that the long strain and struggle was over, a wonderful sense of rest and peace. "I thought it was a dream when first I saw your face, Joan -- when I saw you moving about amongst the sick, always with a child in your arms. I have never been able to ask how you came hither. In those days we could never stay to talk. There are many things I would fain ask now. How come you here alone, save for your old nurse? Are your parents dead likewise?"
"I know not that myself," answered Joan, with the calmness that comes from constantly standing face to face with death. "I have heard naught of them these many weeks. William goes ofttimes to Woodcrych to seek for news of them there. But they have not returned, and he can learn nothing."
And then whilst John lay with closed eyes, his face so white and still that it looked scarce the face of a living man, Joan told him all her tale; and he understood then how it was that she had suddenly appeared amongst them like a veritable angel of mercy.
When her story was done, he opened his eyes and said:
"Where is Raymond?"
"They told me he was sleeping an hour since," answered Joan. "He has sore need of sleep, for he has been watching and working night and day for longer than I may tell. He looks little more than a shadow himself; and he has had Roger to care for of late, since he fell ill."
"But Roger is recovering?"
"Yes. It was the distemper, but in its least deadly form, and he is already fast regaining his strength.
"Has Raymond been the whole time with you? I have never had the chance to speak to him of himself."
And a faint soft flush awoke in Joan's cheek, whilst a smile hovered round the corners of her lips.
"Nor I; yet there be many things I would fain ask of him. He went forth to be with Father Paul when first the Black Death made its fatal entry into the country; and from that day forth I heard naught of him until he came hither to me. We will ask him of himself when he comes to join us. It will be like old times come back again when thou, Joan, and he and I gather about the Yule log, and talk together of ourselves and others."
A common and deadly peril binds very closely together those who have faced it and fought it hand in hand and shoulder to shoulder; and in those days of divided houses, broken lives, and general disruption of all ordinary routine in domestic existence, things that in other times would appear strange and unnatural were now taken as a matter of course. It did not occur to Joan as in any way remarkable that she should remain in John's house, nursing him with the help of Bridget, and playing a sister's part until some of his own kith or kin returned. He had been deserted by all of his own name. She herself knew not whether she had any relatives living. Circumstances had thrown her upon his hospitality, and she had looked upon him almost as a brother ever since the days of her childhood.
She knew that he was dying; there was that in his face which told as much all too well to those who had long been looking upon death. To have left him at such a moment would have seemed far more strange and unnatural than to remain. In those times of terror stranger things were done daily, no man thinking aught of it.
So she smiled as she heard John's last words, trying to recall the day when she had first seen Raymond at Master Bernard's house, when he had seemed to her little more than a boy, albeit a very knightly and chivalrous one. Now her feelings towards him were far different: not that she thought less of his knightliness and chivalry, but that she was half afraid to let her mind dwell too much upon him and her thoughts of him; for of late, since they had been toiling together in the hand-to-hand struggle against disease and death, she was conscious of a feeling toward him altogether new in her experience, and his face was seldom out of her mental vision. The sound of his voice was ever in her ears; and she always knew, by some strange intuition, when he was near, whether she could see him or not.
She knew even as John spoke that he was approaching; and as the latch of the door clicked a soft wave of colour rose in her pale cheek, and she turned her head with a gesture that spoke a mute welcome.
"They tell me that thou art sick, good John," said Raymond, coming forward into the bright circle of the firelight.
The dancing flames lit up that pale young face, worn and hollow with long watching and stress of work, and showed that Raymond had changed somewhat during those weeks of strange experience. Some of the dreaminess had gone out of the eyes, to be replaced by a luminous steadfastness of expression which had always been there, but was now greatly intensified. Pure, strong, and noble, the face was that of a man rather than a boy, and yet the bright, almost boyish, alertness and eagerness were still quickly apparent when he entered into conversation, and turned from one companion to another. It was the same Raymond -- yet with a difference; and both of his companions scanned him with some curiosity as he took his seat beside John's couch and asked of his cousin's welfare.
"Nay, trouble not thyself over me; thou knowest that my life's sands are well-nigh run out. I have been spared for this work, that thou, my Raymond, gavest me to do. I am well satisfied, and thou must be the same, my kind cousin. Only let me have thee with me to the end -- and sweet Mistress Joan, if kind fortune will so favour us. And tell us now of thyself, Raymond, and how it fared with thee before thou camest hither. Hast thou been with Father Paul? And if so, why didst thou leave him? Is he, too, dead?"
"He was not when we parted; he went forward to London when he bid me come to see how it fared with thee, good John, and bring thee his blessing. I should have been with thee one day earlier, save that I turned aside to Basildene, where I heard that the old man lay dying alone."
"Basildene!" echoed both his hearers quickly. "Has the Black Death been there?"
"Ay, and the old man who is called a sorcerer is dead. To me it was given to soothe his dying moments, and give him such Christian burial as men may have when there be no priest at hand to help them to their last rest. I was in time for that."
"Peter Sanghurst dead!" mused John thoughtfully; and looking up at Raymond, he said quickly, "Did he know who and what thou wert?"
"He did; for in his delirium he took me for my mother, and his terror was great, knowing her to be dead. When I told him who I was, he was right glad; and he would fain have made over to me the deeds by which he holds Basildene -- the deeds my mother left behind her in her flight, and which he seized upon. He would fain have made full reparation for that one evil deed of his life; but his son, who had held aloof hitherto, and would have left his father to die untended and alone --"
Joan had uttered a little exclamation of horror and disgust; now she asked, quickly and almost nervously:
"The son -- Peter Sanghurst? O Raymond, was that bad man there?"
"Yes; and he knows now who and what I am, whereby his old hatred to me is bitterly increased. He holds that I have hindered and thwarted him before in other matters. Now that he knows I have a just and lawful claim on Basildene, which one day I will make good, he hates me with a tenfold deadlier hatred."
"Hates you -- when you came to his father in his last extremity? How can he dare to hate you now?"
Raymond smiled a shadowy smile as he looked into the fire.
"Methinks he knows little of filial love. He knew that his father had been stricken with the distemper, but he left him to die alone. He would not have come nigh him at all, save that he heard sounds in the house, and feared that robbers had entered, and that his secret treasure hoards might fall into their hands. He had come down armed to the teeth to resist such marauders, being willing rather to stand in peril of the distemper than to lose his ill-gotten gold. But he found none such as he thought; yet having come, and having learned who and what manner of man I was, he feared to leave me alone with his father, lest I should be told the secret of the hidden hoard, which the old man longed to tell me but dared not. Doubtless the parchment he wished to place in my hands is there; but his son hovered ever within earshot, and the old man dared not speak. Yet with his last breath he called me lord of Basildene, and charged me to remove from it the curse which in his own evil days had fallen upon the place."
"Peter Sanghurst will not love you the more for that," said John.
"Verily no; yet methinks he can scarce hate me more than he does and has done for long."