The Last Man
onset; he did not swerve from the bullets that passed near him, but
rode immediately between the opposing lines. Silence succeeded to
clamour; about fifty men lay on the ground dying or dead. Adrian raised
his sword in act to speak: “By whose command,” he cried, addressing his
own troops, “do you advance? Who ordered your attack? Fall back; these
misguided men shall not be slaughtered, while I am your general. Sheath
your weapons; these are your brothers, commit not fratricide; soon the
plague will not leave one for you to glut your revenge upon: will you
be more pitiless than pestilence? As you honour me—as you worship God,
in whose image those also are created—as your children and friends are
dear to you,—shed not a drop of precious human blood.”
He spoke with outstretched hand and winning voice, and then turning to
our invaders, with a severe brow, he commanded them to lay down their
arms: “Do you think,” he said, “that because we are wasted by plague,
you can overcome us; the plague is also among you, and when ye are
vanquished by famine and disease, the ghosts of those you have murdered
will arise to bid you not hope in death. Lay down your arms, barbarous
and cruel men—men whose hands are stained with the blood of the
innocent, whose souls are weighed down by the orphan’s cry! We shall
conquer, for the right is on our side; already your cheeks are pale—the
weapons fall from your nerveless grasp. Lay down your arms, fellow men!
brethren! Pardon, succour, and brotherly love await your repentance.
You are dear to us, because you wear the frail shape of humanity; each
one among you will find a friend and host among these forces. Shall man
be the enemy of man, while plague, the foe to all, even now is above
us, triumphing in our butchery, more cruel than her own?”
Each army paused. On our side the soldiers grasped their arms firmly,
and looked with stern glances on the foe. These had not thrown down
their weapons, more from fear than the spirit of contest; they looked
at each other, each wishing to follow some example given him,—but they
had no leader. Adrian threw himself from his horse, and approaching one
of those just slain: “He was a man,” he cried, “and he is dead. O
quickly bind up the wounds of the fallen—let not one die; let not one
more soul escape through your merciless gashes, to relate before the
throne of God the tale of fratricide; bind up their wounds—restore them
to their friends. Cast away the hearts of tigers that burn in your
breasts; throw down those tools of cruelty and hate; in this pause of
exterminating destiny, let each man be brother, guardian, and stay to
the other. Away with those blood-stained arms, and hasten some of you
to bind up these wounds.”
As he spoke, he knelt on the ground, and raised in his arms a man from
whose side the warm tide of life gushed—the poor wretch gasped—so still
had either host become, that his moans were distinctly heard, and every
heart, late fiercely bent on universal massacre, now beat anxiously in
hope and fear for the fate of this one man. Adrian tore off his
military scarf and bound it round the sufferer—it was too late—the man
heaved a deep sigh, his head fell back, his limbs lost their sustaining
power.— “He is dead!” said Adrian, as the corpse fell from his arms on
the ground, and he bowed his head in sorrow and awe. The fate of the
world seemed bound up in the death of this single man. On either side
the bands threw down their arms, even the veterans wept, and our party
held out their hands to their foes, while a gush of love and deepest
amity filled every heart. The two forces mingling, unarmed and hand in
hand, talking only how each might assist the other, the adversaries
conjoined; each repenting, the one side their former cruelties, the
other their late violence, they obeyed the orders of the General to
proceed towards London.
Adrian was obliged to exert his utmost prudence, first to allay the
discord, and then to provide for the multitude of the invaders. They
were marched to various parts of the southern counties, quartered in
deserted villages,—a part were sent back to their own island, while the
season of winter so far revived our energy, that the passes of the
country were defended, and any increase of numbers prohibited.
On this occasion Adrian and Idris met after a separation of nearly a
year. Adrian had been occupied in fulfilling a laborious and painful
task. He had been familiar with every species of human misery, and had
for ever found his powers inadequate, his aid of small avail. Yet the
purpose of his soul, his energy and ardent resolution, prevented any
re-action of sorrow. He seemed born anew, and virtue, more potent than
Medean alchemy, endued him with health and strength. Idris hardly
recognized the fragile being, whose form had seemed to bend even to the
summer breeze, in the energetic man, whose very excess of sensibility
rendered him more capable of fulfilling his station of pilot in
storm-tossed England.
It was not thus with Idris. She was uncomplaining; but the very soul of
fear had taken its seat in her heart. She had grown thin and pale, her
eyes filled with involuntary tears, her voice was broken and low. She
tried to throw a veil over the change which she knew her brother must
observe in her, but the effort was ineffectual; and when alone with
him, with a burst of irrepressible grief she gave vent to her
apprehensions and sorrow. She described in vivid terms the ceaseless
care that with still renewing hunger ate into her soul; she compared
this gnawing of sleepless expectation of evil, to the vulture that fed
on the heart of Prometheus; under the influence of this eternal
excitement, and of the interminable struggles she endured to combat and
conceal it, she felt, she said, as if all the wheels and springs of the
animal machine worked at double rate, and were fast consuming
themselves. Sleep was not sleep, for her waking thoughts, bridled by
some remains of reason, and by the sight of her children happy and in
health, were then transformed to wild dreams, all her terrors were
realized, all her fears received their dread fulfilment. To this state
there was no hope, no alleviation, unless the grave should quickly
receive its destined prey, and she be permitted to die, before she
experienced a thousand living deaths in the loss of those she loved.
Fearing to give me pain, she hid as best she could the excess of her
wretchedness, but meeting thus her brother after a long absence, she
could not restrain the expression of her woe, but with all the
vividness of imagination with which misery is always replete, she
poured out the emotions of her heart to her beloved and sympathizing
Adrian.
Her present visit to London tended to augment her state of inquietude,
by shewing in its utmost extent the ravages occasioned by pestilence.
It hardly preserved the appearance of an inhabited city; grass sprung
up thick in the streets; the squares were weed-grown, the houses were
shut up, while silence and loneliness characterized the busiest parts
of the town. Yet in the midst of desolation Adrian had preserved order;
and each one continued to live according to law and custom—human
institutions thus surviving as it were divine ones, and while the
decree of population was abrogated, property continued sacred. It was a
melancholy reflection; and in spite of the diminution of evil produced,
it struck on the heart as a wretched mockery. All idea of resort for
pleasure, of theatres and festivals had passed away. “Next summer,”
said Adrian as we parted on our return to Windsor, “will decide the
fate of the human race. I shall not pause in my exertions until that
time; but, if plague revives with the coming year, all contest with her
must cease, and our only occupation be the choice of a grave.”
I must not forget one incident that occurred during this visit to
London. The visits of Merrival to Windsor, before frequent, had
suddenly ceased. At this time where but a hair’s line separated the
living from the dead, I feared that our friend had become a victim to
the all-embracing evil. On this occasion I went, dreading the worst, to
his dwelling, to see if I could be of any service to those of his
family who might have survived. The house was deserted, and had been
one of those assigned to the invading strangers quartered in London. I
saw his astronomical instruments put to strange uses, his globes
defaced, his papers covered with abstruse calculations destroyed. The
neighbours could tell me little, till I lighted on a poor woman who
acted as nurse in these perilous times. She told me that all the family
were dead, except Merrival himself, who had gone mad— mad, she called
it, yet on questioning her further, it appeared that he was possessed
only by the delirium of excessive grief. This old man, tottering on the
edge of the grave, and prolonging his prospect through millions of
calculated years,—this visionary who had not seen starvation in the
wasted forms of his wife and children, or plague in the horrible sights
and sounds that surrounded him—this astronomer, apparently dead on
earth, and living only in the motion of the spheres—loved his family
with unapparent but intense affection. Through long habit they had
become a part of himself; his want of worldly knowledge, his absence of
mind and infant guilelessness, made him utterly dependent on them. It
was not till one of them died that he perceived their danger; one by
one they were carried off by pestilence; and his wife, his helpmate and
supporter, more necessary to him than his own limbs and frame, which
had hardly been taught the lesson of self-preservation, the kind
companion whose voice always spoke peace to him, closed her eyes in
death. The old man felt the system of universal nature which he had so
long studied and adored, slide from under him, and he stood among the
dead, and lifted his voice in curses.—No wonder that the attendant
should interpret as phrensy the harrowing maledictions of the
grief-struck old man.
I had commenced my search late in the day, a November day, that closed
in early with pattering rain and melancholy wind. As I turned from the
door, I saw Merrival, or rather the shadow of Merrival, attenuated and
wild, pass me, and sit on the steps of his home. The breeze scattered
the grey locks on his temples, the rain drenched his uncovered head, he
sat hiding his face in his withered hands. I pressed his shoulder to
awaken his attention, but he did not alter his position. “Merrival,” I
said, “it is long since we have seen you—you must return to Windsor
with me—Lady Idris desires to see you, you will not refuse her
request—come home with me.”
He replied in a hollow voice, “Why deceive a helpless old man, why talk
hypocritically to one half crazed? Windsor is not my home; my true home
I have found; the home that the Creator has prepared for me.”
His accent of bitter scorn thrilled me—“Do not tempt me to speak,” he
continued, “my words would scare you—in an universe of cowards I dare
think—among the church-yard tombs—among the victims of His merciless
tyranny I dare reproach the Supreme Evil. How can he punish me? Let him
bare his arm and transfix me with lightning—this is also one of his
attributes”—and the old man laughed.
He rose, and I followed him through the rain to a neighbouring
church-yard —he threw himself on the wet earth. “Here they are,” he
cried, “beautiful creatures—breathing, speaking, loving creatures. She
who by day and night cherished the age-worn lover of her youth—they,
parts of my flesh, my children—here they are: call them, scream their
names through the night; they will not answer!” He clung to the little
heaps that marked the graves. “I ask but one thing; I do not fear His