Part 23 (1/2)
”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.
CHAPTER XXI. THE OLD, OLD STORY
The scourge had pa.s.sed. 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 rea.s.sumed 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 n.o.bly 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, a.s.serting 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. Circ.u.mstances 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.