When London Burned Part 35

"Nothing more. You will understand, sir, what our feelings are, and that our hearts are too full of grief and emotion for us to speak. We shall watch together to-night, and lay our case before the Lord."

"Then I will come early in the morning and see if there is aught I can do, sir. I am going back now to Mr. Wallace, who was uneasy at your absence. I suppose you would wish me to say only that I found that there was a robber in the place who, having wounded your servant, was on the point of attacking you when I entered, and that he fled almost immediately."

"That will do. Say to him that for to-night we shall be busy nursing, and that my wife is greatly shaken; therefore I would not that he should come round, but I pray him to call here in the morning."

"I will do so, sir."

Cyril went downstairs, closed the shutters of the window into which he had broken, and put up the bars, and then went out at the door, taking special pains to close it firmly behind him.

He was glad to be out of the house. He had seen many sad scenes during the last few weeks, but it seemed to him that this was the saddest of all. Better, a thousand times, to see a son stricken by the Plague than this. He walked slowly back to the minister's. He met Mr. Wallace at the door of his house.

"I was coming round," the latter said. "Of course one or other of them are stricken?"

"No, sir; it was another cause that prevented their coming. Just as I reached the house I heard a scream, and Mrs. Harvey appeared at the cas.e.m.e.nt calling for help. I forced open a window and ran up. I found that a robber had entered the house. He had seriously wounded the old servant, and was on the point of attacking Mr. Harvey when I entered.

Taken by surprise, the man fled almost immediately. Mrs. Harvey had fainted. At first, we thought the servant was killed, but, finding that he lived, I ran off and fetched Dr. Hodges, who has dressed the wound, and thinks that the man has a good chance of recovery. As Mrs.

Harvey had now come round, and was capable of a.s.sisting her husband, they did not accept my offer to stay and do anything I could. I said I was coming to you, and Mr. Harvey asked me to say that, although they were too much shaken to see you this evening, they should be glad if you would go round to them the first thing in the morning."

"Then the robber got away unharmed?" Mr. Wallace asked.

"He was unharmed, sir. I would rather that you did not question me on the subject. Mr. Harvey will doubtless enter fully into the matter with you in the morning. We did not exchange many words, for he was greatly disturbed in spirit at the wounding of his old servant, and the scene he had gone through; and, seeing that he and his wife would rather be alone with their patient, I left almost directly after Dr.

Hodges went away. However, I may say that I believe that there are private matters in the affair, which he will probably himself communicate to you."

"Then I will ask no more questions, Cyril. I am well content to know that it is not as I feared, and that the Plague had not attacked them."

"I said that I would call round in the morning, sir; but I have been thinking of it as I came along, and consider that, as you will be there, it is as well that I should not do so. I will come round here at ten o'clock, and should you not have returned, will wait until you do. I do not know that I can be of any use whatever, and do not wish to intrude there. Will you kindly say this to them, but add that should they really wish me to go, I will of course do so?"

Mr. Wallace looked a little puzzled.

"I will do as you ask me, but it seems to me that they will naturally wish to see you, seeing that, had it not been for your arrival, they might have been robbed and perhaps murdered."

"You will understand better when you have seen Mr. Harvey, sir. Now I will be making for home; it is about my usual hour, and John Wilkes will be beginning to wonder and worry about me."

To John, Cyril told the same story as to Mr. Wallace.

"But, how was it that you let the villain escape, Master Cyril? Why did you not run him through the body?"

"I had other things to think of, John. There was Mrs. Harvey lying insensible, and the servant desperately wounded, and I thought more of these than of the robber, and was glad enough, when he ran out, to be able to turn my attention to them."

"Ay, ay, that was natural enough, lad; but 'tis a pity the villain got off scot-free. Truly it is not safe for two old people to be in an empty house by themselves in these times, specially as, maybe, the houses on either side are also untenanted, and robbers can get into them and make their way along the roof, and so enter any house they like by the windows there. It was a mercy you chanced to come along.

Men are so accustomed now to hear screams and calls for aid, that none trouble themselves as to such sounds. And you still feel quite well?"

"Never better, John, except for occasional twitches in my shoulder."

"It does not knit so fast as it should do," John said. "In the first place, you are always on the move; then no one can go about into infected houses without his spirits being disturbed, and of all things a calm and easy disposition is essential for the proper healing of wounds. Lastly, it is certain that when there is poison in the air wounds do not heal so quickly as at other times."

"It is going on well enough, John; indeed, I could not desire it to do better. As soon as it is fairly healed I ought to join Prince Rupert again; but in truth I do not wish to go, for I would fain see this terrible Plague come to an end before I leave; for never since the days of the Black Death, hundreds of years ago, was there so strange and terrible a malady in this country."

Mr. Wallace had returned to his house when Cyril called the next morning.

"Thinking over what you said last night, Cyril, I arrived at a pretty correct conclusion as to what had happened, though I thought not that it could be as bad as it was. I knew the object with which Mr. Harvey and his wife had come up to London, at a time when most men were fleeing from it. Their son has, ever since he came up three years ago, been a source of grievous trouble to them, as he was, indeed, for a long time previously. Some natures seem naturally to turn to evil, and this boy's was one of them. It may be that the life at home was too rigid and severe, and that he revolted against it. Certain it is that he took to evil courses and consorted with bad companions.

Severity was unavailing. He would break out of the house at night and be away for days. He was drunken and dissolute.

"At last, just after a considerable sum of money had come into the house from the tenants' rents, he stole it, and went up to London.

His name was not mentioned at home, though his father learnt from correspondents here that he had become a hanger-on of the Court, where, his father being a man of condition, he found friends without difficulty. He was a gambler and a brawler, and bore a bad reputation even among the riff-raff of the Court. His father learnt that he had disappeared from sight at the time the Court went to Oxford early in June, and his correspondent found that he was reported to have joined a band of abandoned ruffians, whose least crimes were those of robbery.

"When the Plague spread rapidly, Mr. Harvey and his wife determined to come up to London, to make one more effort to draw him from his evil courses. The only thing that they have been able to learn for certain was, that he was one of the performers in that wicked mockery the dance of death, but their efforts to trace him have otherwise failed.

"They had intended, if they had found him, and he would have made promises of amendment, to have given him money that would have enabled him to go over to America and begin a new life there, promising him a regular allowance to maintain him in comfort. As they have many friends over there, some of whom went abroad to settle before the Civil War broke out here, they would be able to have news how he was going on; and if they found he was living a decent life, and truly repented his past course, they would in five years have had him back again, and reinstated him as their heir.

"I knew their intentions in the matter, and have done my best to gain them news of him. I did not believe in the reformation of one who had shown himself to be of such evil spirit; but G.o.d is all-powerful, and might have led him out from the slough into which he had fallen.

"Yesterday evening, half an hour before you went there, his father and mother were astonished at his suddenly entering. He saluted them at first with ironical politeness, and said that having heard from one from the same part of the country that he had seen them in London, he had had the streets thereabouts watched, and having found where they lodged, had come to pay his respects.

"There was a reckless bravado in his manner that alarmed his mother, and it was not long before the purpose of his visit came out. He demanded that his father should at once sign a deed which he had brought drawn out in readiness, a.s.signing to him at once half his property.

"'You have,' he said, 'far more than you can require. Living as you do, you must save three-quarters of your income, and it would be at once an act of charity, and save you the trouble of dealing with money that is of no use to you.'

"His father indignantly refused to take any such step, and then told him the plans he had himself formed for him. At this he laughed scoffingly.

"'You have the choice,' he said, 'of giving me half, or of my taking everything.' And then he swore with terrible oaths that unless his father signed the paper, that day should be his last. 'You are in my power,' he said, 'and I am desperate. Do you think that if three dead bodies are found in a house now any will trouble to inquire how they came to their end? They will be tossed into the plague-cart, and none will make inquiry about them.'

"Hearing voices raised in anger, the old servant ran in. At once the villain drew and ran at him, pa.s.sing his sword through his body.

Then, as if transported at the sight of the blood he had shed, he turned upon his father. It was at this moment that his mother ran to the window and called for help. He dragged her back, and as she fell fainting with horror and fear he again turned upon his father; his pa.s.sion grew hotter and hotter as the latter, upbraiding him with the deed he had done, refused to sign; and there is no doubt that he would have taken his life had you not luckily ran in at this moment.

"It has truly been a terrible night for them. They have pa.s.sed it in prayer, and when I went this morning were both calm and composed, though it was easy to see by their faces how they had suffered, and how much the blow has told upon them. They have determined to save their son from any further temptation to enrich himself by their deaths. I fetched a lawyer for them; and when I left Mr. Harvey was giving him instructions for drawing up his will, by which every farthing is left away from him. They request me to go to them this evening with two or three of our friends to witness it, as it is necessary in a time like this that a will should be witnessed by as many as possible, as some may be carried off by the Plague; and should all the witnesses be dead, the will might be disputed as a forgery. So the lawyer will bring his clerks with him, and I shall take four or five of our friends.

"They will return to the country as soon as their servant can be moved. Dr. Hodges came when I was there, and gives hopes that the cure will be a speedy one. We are going to place some men in the house. I have among my poorer friends two men who will be glad to establish themselves there with their wives, seeing that they will pay no rent, and will receive wages as long as Mr. Harvey remains there. There will thus be no fear of any repet.i.tion of the attempt.

Mr. Harvey, on my advice, will also draw up and sign a paper giving a full account of the occurrence of last evening, and will leave this in the hands of the lawyer.

"This will be a protection to him should his son follow him into the country, as he will then be able to a.s.sure him that if he proceeds to violence suspicion will at once fall upon him, and he will be arrested for his murder. But, indeed, the poor gentleman holds but little to his life; and it was only on my representing to him that this doc.u.ment might be the means of averting the commission of the most terrible of all sins from the head of his son, that he agreed to sign it. I gave him your message, and he prays me to say that, deeply grateful as he and his wife are to you, not so much for the saving of their lives, as for preventing their son's soul being stained by the crime, they would indeed rather that you did not call for a time, for they are so sorely shaken that they do not feel equal to seeing you.

You will not, I hope, take this amiss."

"By no means," Cyril replied; "it is but a natural feeling; and, in truth, I myself am relieved that such is their decision, for it would be well-nigh as painful to me as to them to see them again, and to talk over the subject."

"By the way, Cyril, Mr. Harvey said that when you saw his son you cried out his name, and that by the manner in which he turned upon you it was clear that he had some cause for hating you. Is this so, or was it merely his fancy?"

"It was no fancy, sir. It is not long since I thwarted his attempt to carry off the daughter of a city merchant, to whom he had represented himself as a n.o.bleman. He was in the act of doing so, with the aid of some friends, when, accompanied by John Wilkes, I came up. There was a fray, in the course of which I ran him through the shoulder. The young lady returned home with us, and has since heartily repented of her folly. I had not seen the man since that time till I met him yesterday; but certainly the house was watched for some time, as I believe, by his a.s.sociates who would probably have done me an ill turn had I gone out after nightfall."

"That explains it, Cyril. I will tell Mr. Harvey, whose mind has been much puzzled by your recognition of his son."

CHAPTER XVII

SMITTEN DOWN