“Out, thou profane mocker!” cried another; “Dost not see how the Lord sends forth his signs and wonders upon us? Woe’s me for us—a doomed people! Woe’s me! woe’s me!” and the speaker wrung his hands.
“Master Defoe,”[A] said Caleb Field, addressing this bystander, who seemed in some danger of suffering from his gentle and mild expression of skepticism, “may I beg a word with you? You remember Caleb Field?”
[A] There are certain ugly dates which thrust themselves in the way of this encounter; but without doubt so good and honest a citizen as he who wrote the “History of the Plague,” may be permitted to give evidence as to his own state and dwelling-place in a time so remarkable, as well as those troublesome chronologists with whom the parish register is supreme authority.
“Most pleasantly, Master Field,” said the famous dreamer, whose wondrous island solitude, so many youthful souls have dwelt in since those times, “though I can scarce say I have pleasure in welcoming thee back to London. If thou wert safe in a healthful place, good friend, why put thyself in needless peril?”
“And if you question me thus,” said Master Field, “may I not turn upon yourself? When so many fly, why does Master Defoe remain within the fated bounds of London?”
“Truly, for what men would call fantastic reasons,” said the author, with his thoughtful smile: because there were various guidings of me, in my humble way, that pointed, as I thought, to my tarrying. In the Lord’s hands is the issue; but you, Master Field, and this youthful gentlewoman, whom I hold to be the fair little maiden, your daughter, whose countenance I remember long ago—good even, Mistress Edith—I marvel to see you here in this perilous place, where men must tremble lest the very air we breathe be poison.
“Ah! good friend, give you the preachers of the gospel so little credit,” said the Puritan, “that what men can dare for their goods and traffic, ye think we would shrink from, for the name of our King? Trust me, Master Defoe, it is far otherwise. He who supplanted me in my charge has fled, and can I leave them in their extremity, without counsel, and without instruction? Nay, nay, it is not the shepherd who should flee!”
“It is a righteous errand,” said Defoe; “and howsoever we differ in our bright times, it joys me, that in the face of this peril we are all brethren, which shows us happily what it shall be when we have suffered the passage of death, and are met in the fair land beyond, as we know not, truly, how soon we shall be. You see the singular frenzy of this people, and how their vehement fancy, hath skill to make visions for them. I know not any thing more noticeable than even this; for methinks it is less terror for than certainty of God’s judgment.”
“And it is not suddenly sprung up, but hath risen slowly and universally as I hear,” said the minister.
“Since the first notice of that hapless Frenchman’s decease,” said Defoe, “in the close of the by-gone year—he who died in the parish of St. Giles—the sword has been hanging over our heads ever since, waving hither and thither as yonder woman described the angel’s of her fancy. Saw’st thou aught in the heavens, Mistress Edith, like what she said?”