Part 33 (1/2)

'We were in some sort constrained to each other's company. I was for going to my house in Spitalfields, he would go to his parish in Suss.e.x; but the plague was broke out and spreading through Wilts.h.i.+re, Berks.h.i.+re, and Hamps.h.i.+re, and he was so mad distracted to think that it might even then be among his folks at home that I bore him company. He had comforted me in my distress. I could not have done less; and I remembered that I had a cousin at Great Wigsell, near by Jack's parish.

Thus we footed it from Oxford, ca.s.sock and buff coat together, resolute to leave wars on the left side henceforth; and either through our mean appearances, or the plague making men less cruel, we were not hindered.

To be sure they put us in the stocks one half-day for rogues and vagabonds at a village under St. Leonard's forest, where, as I have heard, nightingales never sing; but the constable very honestly gave me back my Astrological Almanac, which I carry with me.' Mr. Culpeper tapped his thin chest. 'I dressed a whitlow on his thumb. So we went forward.

'Not to trouble you with impertinences, we fetched over against Jack Marget's parish in a storm of rain about the day's end. Here our roads divided, for I would have gone on to my cousin at Great Wigsell, but while Jack was pointing me out his steeple, we saw a man lying drunk, as he conceived, athwart the road. He said it would be one Hebden, a paris.h.i.+oner, and till then a man of good life; and he accused himself bitterly for an unfaithful shepherd, that had left his flock to follow princes. But I saw it was the plague, and not the beginnings of it neither. They had set out the plague-stone, and the man's head lay on it.'

'What's a plague-stone?' Dan whispered.

'When the plague is so hot in a village that the neighbours shut the roads against 'em, people set a hollowed stone, pot, or pan, where such as would purchase victual from outside may lay money and the paper of their wants, and depart. Those that would sell come later--what will a man not do for gain?--s.n.a.t.c.h the money forth, and leave in exchange such goods as their conscience reckons fair value. I saw a silver groat in the water, and the man's list of what he would buy was rain-pulped in his wet hand.

'”My wife! Oh, my wife and babes!” says Jack of a sudden, and makes up-hill--I with him.

'A woman peers out from behind a barn, crying out that the village is stricken with the plague, and that for our lives' sake we must avoid it.

'”Sweetheart!” says Jack. ”Must I avoid thee?” and she leaps at him and says the babes are safe. She was his wife.

'When he had thanked G.o.d, even to tears, he tells me this was not the welcome he had intended, and presses me to flee the place while I was clean.

'”Nay! The Lord do so to me and more also if I desert thee now,” I said.

”These affairs are, under G.o.d's leave, in some fas.h.i.+on my strength.”

'”Oh, sir,” she says, ”are you a physician? We have none.”

'”Then, good people,” said I, ”I must e'en justify myself to you by my works.”

'”Look--look ye,” stammers Jack, ”I took you all this time for a crazy Roundhead preacher.” He laughs, and she, and then I--all three together in the rain are overtook by an unreasonable gust or clap of laughter, which none the less eased us. We call it in medicine the Hysterical Pa.s.sion. So I went home with 'em.'

'Why did you not go on to your cousin at Great Wigsell, Nick?' Puck suggested. ''Tis barely seven mile up the road.'

'But the plague was here,' Mr. Culpeper answered, and pointed up the hill. 'What else could I have done?'

'What were the parson's children called?' said Una.

'Elizabeth, Alison, Stephen, and Charles--a babe. I scarce saw them at first, for I separated to live with their father in a cart-lodge. The mother we put--forced--into the house with her babes. She had done enough.

'And now, good people, give me leave to be particular in this case. The plague was worst on the north side of the street, for lack, as I showed 'em, of suns.h.i.+ne; which, proceeding from the _primum mobile_, or source of life (I speak astrologically), is cleansing and purifying in the highest degree. The plague was hot too by the corn-chandler's, where they sell forage to the carters; extreme hot in both Mills along the river, and scatteringly in other places, _except_, mark you, at the smithy. Mark here, that all forges and smith-shops belong to Mars, even as corn and meat and wine-shops acknowledge Venus for their mistress.

There was no plague in the smithy at Munday's Lane----'

'Munday's Lane? You mean our village? I thought so when you talked about the two Mills,' cried Dan. 'Where did we put the plague-stone? I'd like to have seen it.'

'Then look at it now,' said Puck, and pointed to the chickens'

drinking-trough where they had set their bicycle lamps. It was a rough, oblong stone pan, rather like a small kitchen sink, which Phillips, who never wastes anything, had found in a ditch and had used for his precious hens.

'That?' said Dan and Una, and stared, and stared, and stared.

Mr. Culpeper made impatient noises in his throat and went on.

'I am at these pains to be particular, good people, because I would have you follow, so far as you may, the operations of my mind. That plague which I told you I had handled outside Wallingford in Oxfords.h.i.+re was of a watery nature, conformable to the brookish riverine country it bred in, and curable, as I have said, by drenching in water. This plague of ours here, for all that it flourished along watercourses--every soul at both Mills died of it,--could not be so handled. Which brought me to a stand. Ahem!'

'And your sick people in the meantime?' Puck demanded.