The Last Man
it clasped the whole earth in its shadow.
A slight circumstance induced me to alter my usual route, and to return
home by Egham and Bishopgate. I alighted at Perdita’s ancient abode,
her cottage; and, sending forward the carriage, determined to walk
across the park to the castle. This spot, dedicated to sweetest
recollections, the deserted house and neglected garden were well
adapted to nurse my melancholy. In our happiest days, Perdita had
adorned her cottage with every aid art might bring, to that which
nature had selected to favour. In the same spirit of exaggeration she
had, on the event of her separation from Raymond, caused it to be
entirely neglected. It was now in ruin: the deer had climbed the broken
palings, and reposed among the flowers; grass grew on the threshold,
and the swinging lattice creaking to the wind, gave signal of utter
desertion. The sky was blue above, and the air impregnated with
fragrance by the rare flowers that grew among the weeds. The trees
moved overhead, awakening nature’s favourite melody—but the melancholy
appearance of the choaked paths, and weed-grown flower-beds, dimmed
even this gay summer scene. The time when in proud and happy security
we assembled at this cottage, was gone—soon the present hours would
join those past, and shadows of future ones rose dark and menacing from
the womb of time, their cradle and their bier. For the first time in my
life I envied the sleep of the dead, and thought with pleasure of one’s
bed under the sod, where grief and fear have no power. I passed through
the gap of the broken paling—I felt, while I disdained, the choaking
tears—I rushed into the depths of the forest. O death and change,
rulers of our life, where are ye, that I may grapple with you! What was
there in our tranquillity, that excited your envy—in our happiness,
that ye should destroy it? We were happy, loving, and beloved; the horn
of Amalthea contained no blessing unshowered upon us, but, alas!
la fortuna
deidad barbara importuna,
oy cadaver y ayer flor,
no permanece jamas![8]
As I wandered on thus ruminating, a number of country people passed me.
They seemed full of careful thought, and a few words of their
conversation that reached me, induced me to approach and make further
enquiries. A party of people flying from London, as was frequent in
those days, had come up the Thames in a boat. No one at Windsor would
afford them shelter; so, going a little further up, they remained all
night in a deserted hut near Bolter’s lock. They pursued their way the
following morning, leaving one of their company behind them, sick of
the plague. This circumstance once spread abroad, none dared approach
within half a mile of the infected neighbourhood, and the deserted
wretch was left to fight with disease and death in solitude, as he best
might. I was urged by compassion to hasten to the hut, for the purpose
of ascertaining his situation, and administering to his wants.
As I advanced I met knots of country-people talking earnestly of this
event: distant as they were from the apprehended contagion, fear was
impressed on every countenance. I passed by a group of these
terrorists, in a lane in the direct road to the hut. One of them
stopped me, and, conjecturing that I was ignorant of the circumstance,
told me not to go on, for that an infected person lay but at a short
distance.
“I know it,” I replied, “and I am going to see in what condition the
poor fellow is.”
A murmur of surprise and horror ran through the assembly. I
continued:—“This poor wretch is deserted, dying, succourless; in these
unhappy times, God knows how soon any or all of us may be in like want.
I am going to do, as I would be done by.”
“But you will never be able to return to the Castle—Lady Idris—his
children—” in confused speech were the words that struck my ear.
“Do you not know, my friends,” I said, “that the Earl himself, now Lord
Protector, visits daily, not only those probably infected by this
disease, but the hospitals and pest houses, going near, and even
touching the sick? yet he was never in better health. You labour under
an entire mistake as to the nature of the plague; but do not fear, I do
not ask any of you to accompany me, nor to believe me, until I return
safe and sound from my patient.”
So I left them, and hurried on. I soon arrived at the hut: the door was
ajar. I entered, and one glance assured me that its former inhabitant
was no more—he lay on a heap of straw, cold and stiff; while a
pernicious effluvia filled the room, and various stains and marks
served to shew the virulence of the disorder.
I had never before beheld one killed by pestilence. While every mind
was full of dismay at its effects, a craving for excitement had led us
to peruse De Foe’s account, and the masterly delineations of the author
of Arthur Mervyn. The pictures drawn in these books were so vivid, that
we seemed to have experienced the results depicted by them. But cold
were the sensations excited by words, burning though they were, and
describing the death and misery of thousands, compared to what I felt
in looking on the corpse of this unhappy stranger. This indeed was the
plague. I raised his rigid limbs, I marked the distortion of his face,
and the stony eyes lost to perception. As I was thus occupied, chill
horror congealed my blood, making my flesh quiver and my hair to stand
on end. Half insanely I spoke to the dead. So the plague killed you, I
muttered. How came this? Was the coming painful? You look as if the
enemy had tortured, before he murdered you. And now I leapt up
precipitately, and escaped from the hut, before nature could revoke her
laws, and inorganic words be breathed in answer from the lips of the
departed.
On returning through the lane, I saw at a distance the same assemblage
of persons which I had left. They hurried away, as soon as they saw me;
my agitated mien added to their fear of coming near one who had entered
within the verge of contagion.
At a distance from facts one draws conclusions which appear infallible,
which yet when put to the test of reality, vanish like unreal dreams. I
had ridiculed the fears of my countrymen, when they related to others;
now that they came home to myself, I paused. The Rubicon, I felt, was
passed; and it behoved me well to reflect what I should do on this
hither side of disease and danger. According to the vulgar
superstition, my dress, my person, the air I breathed, bore in it
mortal danger to myself and others. Should I return to the Castle, to
my wife and children, with this taint upon me? Not surely if I were
infected; but I felt certain that I was not—a few hours would determine
the question—I would spend these in the forest, in reflection on what
was to come, and what my future actions were to be. In the feeling
communicated to me by the sight of one struck by the plague, I forgot
the events that had excited me so strongly in London; new and more
painful prospects, by degrees were cleared of the mist which had
hitherto veiled them. The question was no longer whether I should share
Adrian’s toils and danger; but in what manner I could, in Windsor and
the neighbourhood, imitate the prudence and zeal which, under his
government, produced order and plenty in London, and how, now
pestilence had spread more widely, I could secure the health of my own
family.
I spread the whole earth out as a map before me. On no one spot of its
surface could I put my finger and say, here is safety. In the south,
the disease, virulent and immedicable, had nearly annihilated the race
of man; storm and inundation, poisonous winds and blights, filled up
the measure of suffering. In the north it was worse—the lesser
population gradually declined, and famine and plague kept watch on the
survivors, who, helpless and feeble, were ready to fall an easy prey
into their hands.
I contracted my view to England. The overgrown metropolis, the great
heart of mighty Britain, was pulseless. Commerce had ceased. All resort
for ambition or pleasure was cut off—the streets were grass-grown—the
houses empty—the few, that from necessity remained, seemed already
branded with the taint of inevitable pestilence. In the larger
manufacturing towns the same tragedy was acted on a smaller, yet more
disastrous scale. There was no Adrian to superintend and direct, while
whole flocks of the poor were struck and killed. Yet we were not all to
die. No truly, though thinned, the race of man would continue, and the
great plague would, in after years, become matter of history and
wonder. Doubtless this visitation was for extent unexampled—more need
that we should work hard to dispute its progress; ere this men have
gone out in sport, and slain their thousands and tens of thousands; but
now man had become a creature of price; the life of one of them was of
more worth than the so called treasures of kings. Look at his
thought-endued countenance, his graceful limbs, his majestic brow, his
wondrous mechanism—the type and model of this best work of God is not
to be cast aside as a broken vessel—he shall be preserved, and his
children and his children’s children carry down the name and form of
man to latest time.
Above all I must guard those entrusted by nature and fate to my
especial care. And surely, if among all my fellow-creatures I were to
select those who might stand forth examples of the greatness and
goodness of man, I could choose no other than those allied to me by the
most sacred ties. Some from among the family of man must survive, and
these should be among the survivors; that should be my task—to
accomplish it my own life were a small sacrifice. There then in that
castle—in Windsor Castle, birth-place of Idris and my babes, should be
the haven and retreat for the wrecked bark of human society. Its forest
should be our world—its garden afford us food; within its walls I would
establish the shaken throne of health. I was an outcast and a vagabond,
when Adrian gently threw over me the silver net of love and
civilization, and linked me inextricably to human charities and human
excellence. I was one, who, though an aspirant after good, and an
ardent lover of wisdom, was yet unenrolled in any list of worth, when
Idris, the princely born, who was herself the personification of all
that was divine in woman, she who walked the earth like a poet’s dream,
as a carved goddess endued with sense, or pictured saint stepping from
the canvas—she, the most worthy, chose me, and gave me herself—a
priceless gift.
During several hours I continued thus to meditate, till hunger and
fatigue brought me back to the passing hour, then marked by long
shadows cast from the descending sun. I had wandered towards Bracknel,
far to the west of Windsor. The feeling of perfect health which I
enjoyed, assured me that I was free from contagion. I remembered that
Idris had been kept in ignorance of my proceedings. She might have
heard of my return from London, and my visit to Bolter’s Lock, which,
connected with my continued absence, might tend greatly to alarm her. I
returned to Windsor by the Long Walk, and passing through the town
towards the Castle, I found it in a state of agitation and disturbance.
“It is too late to be ambitious,” says Sir Thomas Browne. “We cannot
hope to live so long in our names as some have done in their persons;
one face of Janus holds no proportion to the other.” Upon this text
many fanatics arose, who prophesied that the end of time was come. The
spirit of superstition had birth, from the wreck of our hopes, and
antics wild and dangerous were played on the great theatre, while the
remaining particle of futurity dwindled into a point in the eyes of the
prognosticators. Weak-spirited women died of fear as they listened to