The Last Man
present extent of disease in the metropolis. I encouraged them with
such thoughts of cheer as presented themselves. I told them exceedingly
few deaths had yet been occasioned by pestilence, and gave them hopes,
as we were the last visited, so the calamity might have lost its most
venomous power before it had reached us. The cleanliness, habits of
order, and the manner in which our cities were built, were all in our
favour. As it was an epidemic, its chief force was derived from
pernicious qualities in the air, and it would probably do little harm
where this was naturally salubrious. At first, I had spoken only to
those nearest me; but the whole assembly gathered about me, and I found
that I was listened to by all. “My friends,” I said, “our risk is
common; our precautions and exertions shall be common also. If manly
courage and resistance can save us, we will be saved. We will fight the
enemy to the last. Plague shall not find us a ready prey; we will
dispute every inch of ground; and, by methodical and inflexible laws,
pile invincible barriers to the progress of our foe. Perhaps in no part
of the world has she met with so systematic and determined an
opposition. Perhaps no country is naturally so well protected against
our invader; nor has nature anywhere been so well assisted by the hand
of man. We will not despair. We are neither cowards nor fatalists; but,
believing that God has placed the means for our preservation in our own
hands, we will use those means to our utmost. Remember that
cleanliness, sobriety, and even good-humour and benevolence, are our
best medicines.”
There was little I could add to this general exhortation; for the
plague, though in London, was not among us. I dismissed the guests
therefore; and they went thoughtful, more than sad, to await the events
in store for them.
I now sought Adrian, anxious to hear the result of his discussion with
Ryland. He had in part prevailed; the Lord Protector consented to
return to London for a few weeks; during which time things should be so
arranged, as to occasion less consternation at his departure. Adrian
and Idris were together. The sadness with which the former had first
heard that the plague was in London had vanished; the energy of his
purpose informed his body with strength, the solemn joy of enthusiasm
and self-devotion illuminated his countenance; and the weakness of his
physical nature seemed to pass from him, as the cloud of humanity did,
in the ancient fable, from the divine lover of Semele. He was
endeavouring to encourage his sister, and to bring her to look on his
intent in a less tragic light than she was prepared to do; and with
passionate eloquence he unfolded his designs to her.
“Let me, at the first word,” he said, “relieve your mind from all fear
on my account. I will not task myself beyond my powers, nor will I
needlessly seek danger. I feel that I know what ought to be done, and
as my presence is necessary for the accomplishment of my plans, I will
take especial care to preserve my life.
“I am now going to undertake an office fitted for me. I cannot
intrigue, or work a tortuous path through the labyrinth of men’s vices
and passions; but I can bring patience, and sympathy, and such aid as
art affords, to the bed of disease; I can raise from earth the
miserable orphan, and awaken to new hopes the shut heart of the
mourner. I can enchain the plague in limits, and set a term to the
misery it would occasion; courage, forbearance, and watchfulness, are
the forces I bring towards this great work.
“O, I shall be something now! From my birth I have aspired like the
eagle —but, unlike the eagle, my wings have failed, and my vision has
been blinded. Disappointment and sickness have hitherto held dominion
over me; twin born with me, my _would_, was for ever enchained by the
_shall not_, of these my tyrants. A shepherd-boy that tends a silly
flock on the mountains, was more in the scale of society than I.
Congratulate me then that I have found fitting scope for my powers. I
have often thought of offering my services to the pestilence-stricken
towns of France and Italy; but fear of paining you, and expectation of
this catastrophe, withheld me. To England and to Englishmen I dedicate
myself. If I can save one of her mighty spirits from the deadly shaft;
if I can ward disease from one of her smiling cottages, I shall not
have lived in vain.”
Strange ambition this! Yet such was Adrian. He appeared given up to
contemplation, averse to excitement, a lowly student, a man of visions—
but afford him worthy theme, and—
Like to the lark at break of day arising,
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate.[7]
so did he spring up from listlessness and unproductive thought, to the
highest pitch of virtuous action.
With him went enthusiasm, the high-wrought resolve, the eye that
without blenching could look at death. With us remained sorrow,
anxiety, and unendurable expectation of evil. The man, says Lord Bacon,
who hath wife and children, has given hostages to fortune. Vain was all
philosophical reasoning—vain all fortitude—vain, vain, a reliance on
probable good. I might heap high the scale with logic, courage, and
resignation—but let one fear for Idris and our children enter the
opposite one, and, over-weighed, it kicked the beam.
The plague was in London! Fools that we were not long ago to have
foreseen this. We wept over the ruin of the boundless continents of the
east, and the desolation of the western world; while we fancied that
the little channel between our island and the rest of the earth was to
preserve us alive among the dead. It were no mighty leap methinks from
Calais to Dover. The eye easily discerns the sister land; they were
united once; and the little path that runs between looks in a map but
as a trodden footway through high grass. Yet this small interval was to
save us: the sea was to rise a wall of adamant—without, disease and
misery—within, a shelter from evil, a nook of the garden of paradise—a
particle of celestial soil, which no evil could invade—truly we were
wise in our generation, to imagine all these things!
But we are awake now. The plague is in London; the air of England is
tainted, and her sons and daughters strew the unwholesome earth. And
now, the sea, late our defence, seems our prison bound; hemmed in by
its gulphs, we shall die like the famished inhabitants of a besieged
town. Other nations have a fellowship in death; but we, shut out from
all neighbourhood, must bury our own dead, and little England become a
wide, wide tomb.
This feeling of universal misery assumed concentration and shape, when
I looked on my wife and children; and the thought of danger to them
possessed my whole being with fear. How could I save them? I revolved a
thousand and a thousand plans. They should not die—first I would be
gathered to nothingness, ere infection should come anear these idols of
my soul. I would walk barefoot through the world, to find an uninfected
spot; I would build my home on some wave-tossed plank, drifted about on
the barren, shoreless ocean. I would betake me with them to some wild
beast’s den, where a tyger’s cubs, which I would slay, had been reared
in health. I would seek the mountain eagle’s eirie, and live years
suspended in some inaccessible recess of a sea-bounding cliff—no labour
too great, no scheme too wild, if it promised life to them. O! ye
heart-strings of mine, could ye be torn asunder, and my soul not spend
itself in tears of blood for sorrow!
Idris, after the first shock, regained a portion of fortitude. She
studiously shut out all prospect of the future, and cradled her heart
in present blessings. She never for a moment lost sight of her
children. But while they in health sported about her, she could cherish
contentment and hope. A strange and wild restlessness came over me—the
more intolerable, because I was forced to conceal it. My fears for
Adrian were ceaseless; August had come; and the symptoms of plague
encreased rapidly in London. It was deserted by all who possessed the
power of removing; and he, the brother of my soul, was exposed to the
perils from which all but slaves enchained by circumstance fled. He
remained to combat the fiend—his side unguarded, his toils
unshared—infection might even reach him, and he die unattended and
alone. By day and night these thoughts pursued me. I resolved to visit
London, to see him; to quiet these agonizing throes by the sweet
medicine of hope, or the opiate of despair.
It was not until I arrived at Brentford, that I perceived much change
in the face of the country. The better sort of houses were shut up; the
busy trade of the town palsied; there was an air of anxiety among the
few passengers I met, and they looked wonderingly at my carriage—the
first they had seen pass towards London, since pestilence sat on its
high places, and possessed its busy streets. I met several funerals;
they were slenderly attended by mourners, and were regarded by the
spectators as omens of direst import. Some gazed on these processions
with wild eagerness— others fled timidly—some wept aloud.
Adrian’s chief endeavour, after the immediate succour of the sick, had
been to disguise the symptoms and progress of the plague from the
inhabitants of London. He knew that fear and melancholy forebodings
were powerful assistants to disease; that desponding and brooding care
rendered the physical nature of man peculiarly susceptible of
infection. No unseemly sights were therefore discernible: the shops
were in general open, the concourse of passengers in some degree kept
up. But although the appearance of an infected town was avoided, to me,
who had not beheld it since the commencement of the visitation, London
appeared sufficiently changed. There were no carriages, and grass had
sprung high in the streets; the houses had a desolate look; most of the
shutters were closed; and there was a ghast and frightened stare in the
persons I met, very different from the usual business-like demeanour of
the Londoners. My solitary carriage attracted notice, as it rattled
along towards the Protectoral Palace—and the fashionable streets
leading to it wore a still more dreary and deserted appearance. I found
Adrian’s anti-chamber crowded—it was his hour for giving audience. I
was unwilling to disturb his labours, and waited, watching the ingress
and egress of the petitioners. They consisted of people of the middling
and lower classes of society, whose means of subsistence failed with
the cessation of trade, and of the busy spirit of money-making in all
its branches, peculiar to our country. There was an air of anxiety,
sometimes of terror in the new-comers, strongly contrasted with the
resigned and even satisfied mien of those who had had audience. I could
read the influence of my friend in their quickened motions and cheerful
faces. Two o’clock struck, after which none were admitted; those who
had been disappointed went sullenly or sorrowfully away, while I
entered the audience-chamber.
I was struck by the improvement that appeared in the health of Adrian.
He was no longer bent to the ground, like an over-nursed flower of
spring, that, shooting up beyond its strength, is weighed down even by
its own coronal of blossoms. His eyes were bright, his countenance
composed, an air of concentrated energy was diffused over his whole
person, much unlike its former languor. He sat at a table with several
secretaries, who were arranging petitions, or registering the notes
made during that day’s audience. Two or three petitioners were still in
attendance. I admired his justice and patience. Those who possessed a
power of living out of London, he advised immediately to quit it,
affording them the means of so doing. Others, whose trade was