The Red City Part 26

When Rene returned, having attended the doctor to the door, Schmidt was smiling.

"Ah, my son," he said, "only in the Old Testament will you find a man like that--malice and piety, with a belief in himself no man, no reason, can disturb."

"Yes, I heard him with wonder."

"He has done me good, but now I am tired. He has gone--he said so--to visit Miss Gainor, at the Hill. I should like to hear her talk to him."

An attack of gout had not improved that lady's temper, and she cruelly mocked at the great doctor's complaints of his colleagues. When she heard of De Courval, and how at last he would not agree to have Schmidt held for the doctor to bleed him she said he was a fine fellow; and to the doctor's statement that he was a fool, she retorted: "You have changed your religion twice, I do hear. When you are born again, try to be born a fool."

The doctor, enraged, would have gone at once, but the gout was in solid possession, and the threat to send for Dr. Chovet held him. He laughed, outwardly at least, and did not go. The next day he, too, was in the grip of the fever, and was bled to his satisfaction, recovering later to resume his gallant work.

And now that, after another week, Schmidt, a ghastly frame of a man, began to eat, but still would not talk, De Courval, who had never left him except for his swim or to walk in the garden, leaving Cicero in charge, went out into the streets to find a shop and that rare article, tobacco.

It was now well on into this fatal September. The deaths were three hundred a week. The sick no man counted, but probably half of those attacked died. At night in his vigils, De Courval heard negroes, with push-carts or dragging chaises, cry: "Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!" The bodies were let down from upper windows by ropes or left outside of the doorways until the death-cart came and took them away.

It was about noon when Rene left the house. As he neared the center of the city, there were more people in the streets than he expected to see; but all wore a look of anxiety and avoided one another, walking in the middle of the roadway. No one shook hands with friend or kinsman. Many smoked; most of them wore collars of tarred rope, or chewed garlic, or held to their faces vials of "vinegar of the four thieves" once popular in the plague. He twice saw men, stricken as they walked, creep away like animals, beseeching help from those who fled in dismay. Every hour had its sickening tragedy.

As he stood on Second Street looking at a man chalking the doors of infected houses, a lightly clad young woman ran forth screaming. He stopped her. "What is it? Can I help you?" A great impulse of desire to aid came over him, a feeling of pitiful self-appeal to the manhood of his courage.

"Let me go! My husband has it. I won't stay! I am too young to die."

A deadly fear fell upon the young Huguenot. "I, too, am young, and may die," he murmured; but he went in and up-stairs. He saw an old man, yellow and convulsed; but being powerless to help him, he went out to find some one.

On the bridge over Dock Creek he met Daniel Offley. He did not esteem him greatly, but he said, "I want to know how I can help a man I have just left."

The two men who disliked each other had then and there their lesson. "I will go with thee." They found the old man dead. As they came out, Offley said, "Come with me, if thee is minded to aid thy fellows," and they went on, talking of the agony of the doomed city.

Hea.r.s.es and push-carts went by in rows, heavy with naked corpses in the tainted air. Very few well-dressed people were seen. Fashion and wealth had gone, panic-stricken, and good gra.s.s crops could have been cut in the desolate streets near the Delaware.

Now and then some scared man, walking in the roadway, for few, as I said, used the sidewalk, would turn, shocked at hearing the Quaker's loud voice; for, as was noticed, persons who met, spoke softly and low, as if feeling the nearness of the unseen dead in the houses. While De Courval waited, Offley went into several alleys on their way, and came out more quiet.

"I have business here," said Offley, as he led the way over the south side of the Potter's Field we now call Washington Square. He paused to pay two black men who were digging wide pits for the fast-coming dead cast down from the death-carts. A Catholic priest and a Lutheran clergyman were busy, wearily saying brief prayers over the dead.

Offley looked on, for a minute silent. "The priest is of Rome," he said, "one Keating--a good man; the other a Lutheran."

"Strange fellowship!" thought De Courval.

They left them to this endless task, and went on, Daniel talking in his oppressively loud voice of the number of the deaths. The imminence of peril affected the spirits of most men, but not Offley. De Courval, failing to answer a question, he said: "What troubles thee, young man?

Is thee afeared?"

"A man should be--and at first I was; but now I am thinking of the Papist and Lutheran--working together. That gives one to think, as we say in French."

"I see not why," said Offley. "But we must hasten, or the health committee will be gone."

In a few minutes they were at the State House. Daniel led him through the hall and up-stairs. In the council-room of Penn was seated a group of notable men.

"Here," said Offley in his great voice, "is a young man of a will to help us."

Girard rose. "This, gentlemen, is my countryman, the Vicomte de Courval."

Matthew Clarkson, the mayor, made him welcome.

"Sit down," he said. "We shall presently be free to direct you."

De Courval took the offered seat and looked with interest at the men before him.

There were Carey, the future historian of the plague; Samuel Wetherill, the Free Quaker; Henry de Forrest, whom he had met; Thomas Savory; Thomas Wistar; Thomas Scattergood; Jonathan Seargeant; and others. Most of them, being Friends, sat wearing their white beaver hats. Tranquil and fearless, they were quietly disposing of a task from which some of the overseers of the poor had fled. Six of those present were very soon to join the four thousand who died before November. When the meeting was over Girard said to De Courval: "Peter Helm and I are to take charge of the hospital on Bush Hill. Are you willing to help us? It is perilous; I ought to tell you that."

"Yes, I will go," said Rene; "I have now time, and I want to be of some use."

"We thank you," said Matthew Clarkson. "Help is sorely needed."

"Come with me," said Girard. "My chaise is here. Help is scarce. Too many who should be of us have fled." As they went out, he added: "I owe this city much, as some day it will know. You are going to a scene of ungoverned riot, of drunken negro nurses; but it is to be changed, and soon, too."

James Hamilton's former country seat on Bush Hill was crowded with the dying and the dead; but there were two devoted doctors, and soon there was better order and discipline.

De Courval went daily across the doomed city to his loathsome task, walking thither after his breakfast. He helped to feed and nurse the sick, aided in keeping the beds decent, and in handling the many who died, until at nightfall, faint and despairing, he wandered back to his home. Only once Schmidt asked a question, and hearing his sad story, was silent, except to say: "I thought as much. G.o.d guard you, my son!"

One day, returning, he saw at evening on Front Street a man seated on a door-step. He stopped, and the man looked up. It was the blacksmith Offley.

"I am stricken," he said. "Will thee help me?"

"Surely I will." De Courval a.s.sisted him into the house and to bed. He had sent his family away. "I have shod my last horse, I fear. Fetch me Dr. Hutchinson."

"He died to-day."

"Then another--Dr. Hodge; but my wife must not know. She would come.

Ask Friend Pennington to visit me. I did not approve of thee, young man.

I ask thee pardon; I was mistaken. Go, and be quick."

"I shall find some one." He did not tell him that both Pennington and the physician were dead.

De Courval was able to secure the needed help, but the next afternoon when he returned, the blacksmith was in a hea.r.s.e at the door. De Courval walked away thoughtful. Even those he knew avoided him, and he observed, what many noticed, that every one looked sallow and their eyes yellow. A strange thing it seemed.

And so, with letters well guarded, that none he loved might guess his work, September pa.s.sed, and the German was at last able to be in the garden, but strangely feeble, still silent, and now asking for books. A great longing was on the young man to see those he loved; but October, which saw two thousand perish, came and went, and it was well on into the cooler November before the pest-house was closed and De Courval set free, happy in a vast and helpful experience, but utterly worn out and finding his last week's walks to the hospital far too great an exertion.

What his body had lost for a time, his character had gained in an exercised charity for the sick, for the poor, and for the opinions of men on whom he had previously looked with small respect.

A better and wiser man on the 20th of November drove out with Schmidt to the home of the Wynnes at Merion, where Schmidt left him to the tender care of two women, who took despotic possession.

"At last!" cried the mother, and with tears most rare to her she held the worn and wasted figure in her arms. "_Mon Dieu!_" she cried, as for the first time she heard of what he had done. For only to her was confession of heroic conduct possible. "And I--I would have kept you from G.o.d's service. I am proud of you as never before." All the long afternoon they talked, and Mr. Wynne, just come back, and Darthea would have him to stay for a few days.

At bedtime, as they sat alone, Hugh said to his wife, "I was sure of that young man."

"Is he not a little like you?" asked Darthea.

"Nonsense!" he cried. "Do you think every good man like me? I grieve that I was absent."

"And I do not."