CHAPTER XLVII. THE BLACK CAMEL AT THE GATE.
Next morning after Rotha's struggle with Mrs. Garth at the bridge, the rumor passed through Wythburn that the plague was in the district. Since the advent of the new preachers the people had seen the dreaded scourge dangling from the sleeve of every stranger who came from the fearsome world without. They had watched for the fatal symptoms: they had waited for them: they had invited them. Every breeze seemed to be freighted with the plague wind; every harmless ailment seemed to be the epidemic itself.
Not faith in the will of God, not belief in destiny, not fortitude or fatalism, not unselfishness or devil-may-care indifference, had saved the people from the haunting dread of being mown down by the unseen and insidious foe.
And now in very truth the plague seemed to have reached their doors. It was at the cottage by the smithy. Rumor said that Mrs. Garth had brought it with her from Carlisle, but it was her son who was stricken down.
The blacksmith had returned home soon after Rotha had left him. His mother was there, and she talked to him of what she had heard of the plague. This was in order to divert his attention from the subject that she knew to be uppermost in his thoughts—the trial, and what had come of it. She succeeded but too well.
Garth listened in silence, and then slunk off doggedly to the smithy.
“I'm scarce well enough for work to-day,” he said, coming back in half an hour.
His mother drew the settle to the fire, and fixed the cushions that he might lie and rest.
But no rest was to be his. He went back to the anvil and worked till the perspiration dripped from his forehead. Then he returned to the house.
“My mouth is parched to-day, somehow,” he said; “did you say a parched mouth was a sign?”
“Shaf, lad! thou'rt hot wi' thy wark.”
Garth went back once more to the smithy, and, writhing under the torture of suspense, he worked until the very clothes he wore were moist to the surface. Then he went into the house again.
“How my brain throbs!” he said; “surely you said the throbbing brain was a sign, mother; and my brain does throb.”
“Tut, tut! it's nobbut some maggot thou's gitten intil it.”
“My pulse, too, it gallops, mother. You said the galloping pulse was a sign. Don't say you did not. I'm sure of it, I'm sure of it; and my pulse gallops. I could bear the parched mouth and the throbbing brain if this pulse did not run so fast.”
“Get away wi' thee, thou dummel-heed. What fagot has got hold on thy fancy now?”
There was only the swollen gland wanted to make the dread symptoms complete.
Garth went back to the anvil once more. His eyes rolled in his head. They grew as red as the iron that he was welding. He swore at the boy who helped him, and struck him fiercely. He shouted frantically, and flung away the hammer at every third blow. The boy slunk off, and went home affrighted. At a sudden impulse, Garth tore away the shirt from his breast, and thrust his left hand beneath his right arm. With that the suspense was ended. A mood of the deepest sadness and dejection supervened. Shuddering in every limb beneath all his perspiration, the blacksmith returned for the last time to the house.
“I wouldn't mind the parched mouth and the throbbing brain; no, nor the galloping pulse, mother; but oh, mother, mother, the gland, it's swelled; ey, ey, it's swelled. I'm doomed, I'm doomed. No use saying no. I'm a dead man, that's the truth, that's the truth, mother.”
And then the disease, whether plague or other fever, passed its fiery hand over the throbbing brain of the blacksmith, and he was put to bed raving.
Little Betsy, like the boy in the smithy, stole away to her own home with ghastly stories of the blacksmith's illness and delirium.
At first the neighbors came to inquire, prompted partly by curiosity, but mainly by fear. Mrs. Garth shut the door, and refused to open it to any comers.
To enforce seclusion was not long a necessity. Desertion was soon the portion of the Garths, mother and son. More swift than a bad name passed the terrible conviction among the people at Wythburn that at last, at long last, the plague, the plague itself, was in their midst.
The smithy cottage stood by the bridge, and to reach the market town by the road it was necessary to pass it within five yards. Pitiful, indeed, were the artifices to escape contagion resorted to by some who professed the largest faith in the will of God. They condemned themselves to imprisonment within their own houses, or abandoned their visits to Gaskarth, or made a circuit of a mile across the breast of a hill, in order to avoid coming within range of the proscribed dwelling.
After three days of rumor and surmise, there was not a soul in the district would go within fifty yards of the house that was believed to hold the pestilence. No doctor approached it, for none had been summoned. The people who brought provisions left them in the road outside, and hailed the inmates. Mrs. Garth sat alone with her stricken son, and if there had been eyes to see her there in her solitude and desolation, perhaps the woman who seemed hard as flint to the world was softening in her sorrow. When the delirium passed away, and Garth lay conscious, but still feverish, his mother was bewailing their desertion.
“None come nigh to us, Joey, none come nigh. That's what the worth of neighbors is, my lad. They'd leave us to die, both on us; they'd leave us alone to die, and none wad come nigh.”
“Alone, mother! Did you say alone?” asked Garth.
“We're not alone, mother. Some one has come nigh to us.”
Mrs. Garth looked up amazed, and half turned in her seat to glance watchfully around.
“Mother,” said Garth, “did you ever pray?”
“Hod thy tongue, lad, hod thy tongue,” said Mrs. Garth, with a whimper.
“Did you ever pray, mother?” repeated Garth, his red eyes aflame, and his voice cracking in his throat. “Whisht, Joey, whisht!”
“Mother, we've not lived over well, you and I; but maybe God would forgive us, after all.”
“Hod thy tongue, my lad; do, now, do.”
Mrs. Garth fumbled with the bedclothes, and tucked them about the sufferer.
Her son turned his face full upon hers, and their eyes met.
“Dunnet look at me like that,” she said, trying to escape his gaze. “What's comin' ower thee, my lad, that thou looks so, and talks so?”
“What's coming over me, mother? Shall I tell thee? It's Death that's coming over me; that's what it is, mother—Death!”
“Dunnet say that, Joey.”
The old woman threw her apron over her head and sobbed.
Garth looked at her, with never a tear in his wide eyes.
“Mother,” said the poor fellow again in his weak, cracked voice,—“mother, did you ever pray?”
Mrs. Garth uncovered her head. Her furrowed face was wet. She rocked herself and moaned.
“Ey, lad, I mind that I did when I was a wee bit of a girl. I had rosy cheeks then, and my own auld mother wad kiss me then. Ey, it's true. We went to church on a Sunday mornin' and all the bells ringin'. Ey, I mind that, but it's a wa', wa' off, my lad, it's a wa', wa' off.”
The day was gaunt and dreary. Toward nightfall the wind arose, and sometimes its dismal wail seemed to run around the house. The river, too, now swollen and turbulent, that flowed beneath the neighboring bridge, added its voice of lamentation as it wandered on and on to the ocean far away.
In the blacksmith's cottage another wanderer was journeying yet faster to a more distant ocean. The darkness closed in. Garth was tossing on his bed. His mother was rocking herself at his side. All else was still.
Then a step was heard on the shingle without, and a knock came to the door. The blacksmith struggled to lift his head and listen. Mrs. Garth paused in her rocking and ceased to moan.
“Who ever is it?” whispered Garth.
“Let them stay where they are, whoever it be,” his mother mumbled, never shifting from her seat. The knock came again.
“Nay, mother, nay; it is too late to—”
He had said no more when the latch was lifted, and Rotha Stagg walked into the room.
“I've come to help to nurse you, if you please,” she said, addressing the sick man.
Garth looked steadily at her for a moment, every feature quivering. Shame, fear, horror—any sentiment but welcome—was written on his face. Then he straggled to twist his poor helpless body away; his head, at least, he turned from her to the wall.
“It wad look better of folk if they'd wait till they're axt,” muttered Mrs. Garth, with downcast eyes.
Rotha unpinned the shawls that had wrapped her from the cold, and threw them over a chair. She stirred the fire and made it burn brightly; there was no other light in the room. The counterpane, which had been dragged away in the restlessness of the sufferer, she spread afresh. Reaching over the bed, she raised the sick man's head tenderly on her arm while she beat out his pillow. Never once did he lift his eyes to hers.
Mrs. Garth still rocked herself in her seat. “Folks should wait till they're wanted,” she mumbled again; but the words broke down into a stifled sob.
Rotha lit a candle that stood at hand, went to the cupboard in the corner of the adjoining kitchen, and took out a jar of barley; then to the hearth and took up a saucepan. In two minutes she was boiling something on the fire.
Mrs. Garth was following every movement with watchful eyes.
Presently the girl came to the bedside again with a basin in her hand.
“Take a little of this, Mr. Garth,” she said. “Your mouth is parched.”
“How did you know that?” he muttered, lifting his eyes at last.
She made no reply, but held her cool hand to his burning forehead. He motioned to her to draw it away. She did so.
“It's not safe—it's not safe for you, girl,” he said in his thin whisper, his breath coming and going between every word.
She smiled, put back her hand and brushed the dank hair from his moist brow.
Mrs. Garth got up from her seat by the bedside and hobbled to the fire. There she sat on a low stool, and threw her apron over her head.
Again raising the blacksmith from his pillow, Rotha put a spoonful of barley-water to his withered lips. He was more docile than a child now, and let her have her will.
For a moment he looked at her with melancholy eyes, and then, shifting his gaze, he said,—
“You had troubles enow of your own, Rotha, without coming to share ours—mother's and mine.”
“Yes,” she answered, and a shadow crossed the cheerful face.
“Will they banish him?” he said with quick-coming breath. “Mother says so; will they banish him from the country?”
“Yes, perhaps; but it will be to another and a better country,” said Rotha, and dropped her head.
Garth glanced inquiringly into her face. His mother shifted on her stool.
“How, how?” he said, nervously clutching at the bedclothes.
“Why do you bother him, girl?” said Mrs. Garth, turning about. “Rest thee, my lad, rest thee still.”
“Mother,” said Garth, drawing back his head, but never shifting the determination of his gaze from Rotha's face, “what does she mean?”
“Haud thy tongue, Joey.”
“What does she mean, mother?”
“Whisht! Never heed folks that meddle afore they're axt.”
Mrs. Garth spoke peevishly, rose from her seat, and walked between Rotha and the bed.
Garth's wide eyes were still riveted on the girl's face.
“Never mind that she's not asked,” he said; “but what does she mean, mother? What lie is it that she comes to tell us!”
“No lie, Mr. Garth,” said Rotha, with tearful eyes. “Ralph and father are condemned to die, and they are innocent.”
“Tush! get away wi' thee!” mumbled Mrs. Garth, brushing the girl aside with her elbow. The blacksmith glared at her, and seemed to gasp for breath.
“It is a lie; mother, tell her it is a lie.”
“God knows it is not,” cried Rotha passionately.
“Say I believed it,” said Garth, rising convulsively on one elbow, with a ghastly stare; “say I believed that the idiots had condemned them to death for a crime they never committed—never; say I believed it—but it's a lie, that's what it is. Girl, girl, how can you come with a lie on your lips to a poor dying man? Cruel! cruel! Have you no pity, none, for a wretched dying man?”
The tears rolled down Rotha's cheeks. Mrs. Garth returned to her stool, and rocked herself and moaned.
The blacksmith glared from one to the other, the sweat standing in heavy beads on his forehead.
Then an awful scream burst from his lips. His face was horribly distorted.
“It is true,” he cried, and fell back and rolled on the bed.
All that night the fiery hand lay on the blacksmith's brain, and he tossed in a wild delirium.
The wind's wail ran round the house, and the voice of that brother wanderer, the river beneath the bridge crept over the silence when the sufferer lay quiet and the wind was still.
No candle was now lighted, but the fire on the hearth burnt bright. Mrs. Garth sat before it, hardly once glancing up.
Again and again her son cried to her with the yearning cry of a little child. At such times the old woman would shrink within herself, and moan and cower over the fire, and smoke a little black pipe.
Hour after hour the blacksmith rolled in his bed in a madness too terrible to record. The memory of his blasphemies seemed to come back upon him in his raving, and add fresh agony to his despair.
A naked soul stood face to face with the last reality, battling meantime, with an unseen foe. There was to be no jugglery now.
Oh! that awful night, that void night, that night of the wind's wail and the dismal moan of the wandering river, and the frequent cry of a poor, miserable, desolate, despairing, naked soul! Had its black wings settled forever over all the earth?
No. The dawn came at last. Its faint streak of light crept lazily in at the curtainless window.
Then Garth raised himself in his bed.
“Give me paper—paper and a pen—quick, quick!” he cried.
“What would you write, Joe?” said Rotha.
“I want to write to him—to Ralph—Ralph Ray,” he said, in a voice quite unlike his own.
Rotha ran to the chest in the kitchen and opened it. In a side shelf pens were there and paper too. She came back, and put them before the sick man.
But he was unconscious of what she had done.
She looked into his face. His eyes seemed not to see.
“The paper and pen!” he cried again, yet more eagerly.
She put the quill into his hand and spread the paper before him.
“What writing is this,” he cried, pointing to the white sheet; “this writing in red?”
“Where?”
“Here—everywhere.”
The pen dropped from his nerveless fingers.
“To think they will take a dying man!” he said. “You would scarce think they would have the heart, these people. You would scarce think it, would you?” he said, lifting his poor glassy eyes to Rotha's face.
“Perhaps they don't know,” she answered soothingly, and tried to replace him on his pillow.
“That's true,” he muttered; “perhaps they don't know how ill I am.”
At that instant he caught sight of his mother's ill-shapen figure cowering over the fire. Clutching Rotha's arm with one hand, he pointed at his mother with the other, and said, with an access of strength,—
“I've found her out; I've found her out.”
Then he laughed till it seemed to Rotha that the blood stood still in her heart.
When the full flood of daylight streamed into the little room, Garth had sunk into a deep sleep.