XIV
In the summer of 1793, the city of Penn numbered forty-five thousand souls, and lay in the form of an irregularly bounded triangle, the apex being about seven squares, as we say, west of the Delaware. From this it spread eastward, widening until the base, thinly builded with shops, homes, and warehouses, extended along the Delaware River a distance of about two miles from Callowhill Street to Cedar. It was on the parts nearest to the river that the death-cloud lay.
De Courval had walked from the Falls of Schuylkill late in the morning, and, after having been ferried across the Schuylkill, passed by forest and farm roads over a familiar, rolling country, and arrived at Merion, in the Welsh barony, where he parted from his mother. To this distance he was now to add the seven miles which would bring him to the city.
He soon reached the Lancaster road, and after securing a bowl of bread and milk, for which he paid the exorbitant price of two shillings at a farm-house, he lay down in the woods and, lighting his meerschaum pipe, rested during the early afternoon, glad of shelter from the moist heat of the September day.
He had much to think about. His mother he dismissed, smiling. If, after what he had said, he had not obeyed the call of duty and gratitude, he knew full well that she would have been surprised, despite her protests and the terror with which his errand filled her. He, too, felt it, for it is the form which peril takes rather than equality of risk which makes disease appal many a man for whom war has the charm which awakens the lust of contest, and not such alarm as the presence of the unseen foe which gives no quarter. He dismissed his fears with a silent appeal for strength and support.
He thought then of his enemy. Where was he? This pestilence, the inexplicable act of an all-powerful God, had for a time been set as a barrier between him and his foe. If either he or Carteaux died of it, there was an end of all the indecisions that affection had put in his way. He had a moral shock at the idea that he was unwilling to believe it well that the will of God should lose him the fierce joy of a personal vengeance. How remote seemed such a feeling from the religious calm of the Quaker home! And then a rosy face, a slight, gray-clad figure, came before him with the clearness of visual perception which was one of his mental peculiarities. The sense of difference of rank which his mother had never lost, and would never lose, he had long since put aside. Margaret's refinement, her young beauty, her gay sweetness, her variety of charm, he recalled as he lay; nor against these was there for him any available guard of common sense, that foe of imprudent love, to sum up the other side with the arithmetic of worldly wisdom. He rose, disturbed a little at the consciousness of a power beginning to get beyond his control, and went on his way down the long, dusty road, refreshed by the fair angel company of Love and Longing.
Very soon he was recalled from his dreams. As he came within a mile of the city, he saw tents as for an army, camp-fires, people cooking, men, women, and children lying about by the roadside and in the orchards or the woods. Two hungry-looking mechanics begged help of him. He gave them each a shilling and went on. The nearer shore of the quiet Schuylkill was lined with tents. Over the middle-ferry floating bridge came endlessly all manner of vehicles packed with scared people, the continuous drift from town of all who could afford to fly, a pitiful sight in the closing day. Beyond the river were more tents and half-starved families.
At dusk, as he went eastward on Market Street, there were fewer people, and beyond Sixth Street almost none. The taverns were closed. Commerce was at an end. Turning south, he crossed the bridge over Dock Creek at Second Street and was soon in a part of the city where death and horror had left only those whom disease, want of means, or some stringent need, forbade to leave their homes. Twenty-four thousand then or later fled the town. A gallant few who could have gone, stayed from a sense of duty.
Exposure at night was said to be fatal, so that all who could were shut up indoors, or came out in fear only to feed with pitch and fence palings the fires kindled in the streets which were supposed to give protection, but were forbidden later. A canopy of rank tar-smoke hung over the town and a dull, ruddy glow from these many fires. Grass grew in the roadway of the once busy street, and strange silence reigned where men were used to move amid the noises of trade. As he walked on deep in thought, a woman ran out of a house, crying: "They are dead! All are dead!" She stopped him. "Is my baby dead, too?"
"I—I do not know," he said, looking at the wasted, yellow face of the child in her arms. She left it on the pavement, and ran away screaming. He had never in his life touched the dead; but now, though with repugnance, he picked up the little body and laid it on a door-step. Was it really dead? he asked himself. He stood a minute looking at the corpse; then he touched it. It was unnaturally hot, as are the dead of this fever. Not seeing well in the dusk, and feeling a strange responsibility, he laid a hand on the child's heart. It was still. He moved away swiftly through the gathering gloom of deserted streets. On Front Street, near Lombard, a man, seeing him approach, ran from him across the way. A little farther, the sense of solitude and loneliness grew complete as the night closed dark about him. He had been long on his way.