William Shakespeare as he lived Part 19

Attributing it to the heat and excitement she had undergone, Sir Hugh bore her to her couch, and as she soon recovered from her swoon he again sought his guests.

When he did so, he observed that during his absence the party had been increased by the addition of some half a dozen cavaliers completely armed, and as he entered the room the chief of the party stepped up to him, and laid his hand upon his shoulder.

"Sir Hugh Clopton, of Clopton," he said, in a loud voice, "I arrest thee of high treason, in the name of our most sovereign lady the Queen."

CHAPTER XIX.

THE PLAGUE AT STRATFORD.

The swift pa.s.sage of events, and which it has taken some little time to record, has necessarily obliged us to omit mention of several minor characters of our story, but who, nevertheless, have been playing their parts upon the stage as well as those of greater note and import.

Amongst others, Master Dismal, whose cue it seemed to ferret out all sorts of disagreeables and who seemed to batton upon horrors, had not failed to follow up the hint promulgated at the Falcon regarding the sickness which had appeared in the town.

At the period of our story the plague was no uncommon visitor in the different towns in England, and awful were the consequences of such visitation when it appeared.

In cases of this sort when some dire disease breaks out amongst the poor and ignorant, they generally at first conceal it. Struck with dismay, they yet resolve to doubt the suspicious appearance till confirmation of its reality drives them to disclosure.

The plague was indeed so much dreaded at this time, that those first infected were looked upon with as much horror and dislike as if they were absolutely guilty of its production.

The very suspicion of its appearance was sufficient to frighten the town from its propriety. The inhabitants withdrew from the businesses and pleasures of life like snails within their sh.e.l.ls. Each feared his neighbour, and all around was distrust and dread. It was this fear, together with the unclean state of the town, and most of the houses in it, which made the pestilence so quick and be fatal in its effects.

Evils, it has been said, are more to be dreaded from the suddenness of their attack than from their magnitude or duration. In the storms of life those that are foreseen are half overcome.

This disease, however, was in general as formidable and as difficult to get rid of in a town, as its coining was sudden and unexpected. It was like the wind which sailors term the tiffoon, pouncing upon the vessel like an eagle upon the prey, and paralyzing the victim at once.

Master Dismal had received intelligence of this visitation by an anonymous communication, written upon a dirty sc.r.a.p of paper, and which had been one night thrown in at his window.

The scrawl was in such strange hieroglyphics, and so vaguely worded, that any other person beside himself would have failed in hitting upon its hidden meaning; but the busy-body had a peculiar facility in deciphering and discovering horrors. Nay, his visitations amongst his neighbours and townsfolk were generally looked upon by them as a sure harbinger of evil in one shape or other. He was a sort of stormy petrel in the town, a forerunner of danger and despair. He even loved to watch the progress of misery and disease, contemplating the ills mankind are subject to, with a philosophic eye.

If a whole family were to be swept off, his visits continued as long as the disease lasted amongst them; and he made his entrance and took his leave with the doctor.

In fact, it was his recreation to study the maladies and miseries "the poor compounded clay, man, is heir to." Accidents and wounds, and indeed every sort of infliction his neighbours were subject to, it was his humour to watch curiously,--nay, he was even interested in the sight of a felon's ear, nailed to the cart wheel, whilst a knave set in the stocks, or a vagabond whipped through the town, was a matter of reflection, and a spectacle to be hunted after: and when Dame Patch was placed upon the cuckin stool, and then ducked in the Avon for lying and slander, he was observed next day to pay her a visit of condolence, whilst some affirmed that he had even remained a whole week in her dwelling to offer her consolation in her distress.

In addition to these peculiarities, we need hardly mention that the funeral bell was at any time a grateful sound to his ears, seldom failing to call him forth from his home, whatever his employment might happen to be.

Then again he loved to contemplate a batch of dirty urchins, in all the enjoyment of mud and mire, freedom and mischief, revelling in undisturbed possession of the kennel or the road, and to speculate upon the chances against one-third of them reaching maturity, or their probable fate if they did so.

Following the clue given him by the anonymous communication, and which he had received a few hours before he announced the news it contained at the Falcon, he had made a search through the locality hinted at. The note, which was vaguely and notoriously worded, had pointed to some house in the suburbs; and, after duly calling over the different persona whom he considered likely to have been the writer of the billet, he fixed it upon a crazy, half insane fellow, living in a lone house in Henley Street.

Accordingly, when the shadows of evening descended, he went prying about, and peeping into all the windows, and listening at all the doors on either side that street. "Wat Murdake," he said to himself, "is a maniac,--a dangerous fellow at times, having fits of violence quite awful to look on. He killed his wife with a shoemaker's awl, pierced her ear when she was asleep,--at least, so it is said, and he confesses it even now in his ravings,--but that's nought. Many an old host that I know would be glad to do the same, if they dared, for the women do drive men to desperate deeds with that unruly member, the tongue. Wat Murdake is a dangerous fellow at times, and exceedingly mad always, but then he is pretty cunning, and keepeth a sure eye upon his neighbour. An I cannot find these plague spots, I will seek him and make inquiry, for 'tis good I saw into the matter at once.

"Ah! what's that I hear? A scream? No, it's only a child squalling, and the mother singing it to sleep with a merry song. There's no misery there. So pa.s.s we on to the next. What's that, a groan? No, it's a fellow practising on the ba.s.s-viol. All right I trow there; where music _is_, contentment rests, and no plague. What's this?" he continued, listening at the next house, "lamentations and words of woe? No, it's man and wife quarrelling. Ah! and there they go to blows. There is no real misery there, but what they make for themselves; they've plague enough, but not the plague I seek. Pa.s.s we on again. What's here? the bones rattling? Yes, dicing, drinking, and brawl. It's not there.

It _may_ come to that, but they don't begin _so_. There'll be death, perhaps, in the house, but it will be by violence, _not disease_--to-night, to-morrow, perhaps; who knows? And so Master Dismal pa.s.sed on from door to door, taking his cue of good or ill from the employment of the inmates of the different houses. At length he came to a lone, squalid-looking hut, the last but one in the street, standing in its own untrimmed and neglected garden; a ruin with walls so rent as to shew one-half of its heavy-beamed rooms in a skeleton state; the remainder being patched up to expel the wind and rain, and reclaimed, as it were, in a slovenly manner, from the general state of decay.

The toad sat and croaked in the long damp gra.s.s, and the lizard crawled over the muddy pathway to the door, as Dismal stopped and listened.

"This looks like business," he said, "I quite forgot this house of ill-omen. Ah! what a dirty-mantled pond in the garden! Here we have it, sure enough! there's no mistaking these sounds! Let me see, this is the residence of Smite Drear and his family, the most drunken, ill-conducted, dirty, evil-minded lot in all Warwicks.h.i.+re--the man a vile caitiff, a puritan whose tongue is ruin; the woman a slanderer also, and a termagant; the children thieves, liars, and imps of ill.

_I'm sure it's here_; _I know it's here_; it _must_ be here; it _ought_ to be here; it _is_ here. Yea, and here it _is_, sure enough! If I could only get a peep into the interior, I should know in a minute. Let me see; where's my pouncet-box? Ah! there's another groan, and the sob of a female! I hear some one praying too; rather unusual _that_, I trow. I must go in. _But no_, I cannot _get_ in, the door is fastened; I'll knock."

It was some time before the summons of Master Dismal was answered. But at last the owner of the hovel removed a broken shutter from an upper window, and thrusting out his head, growled a malediction upon the person disturbing him.

"Pa.s.s on," he said, "and trouble us not."

"I would crave permission," said Dismal, "to pay a visit on matters----"

"_Crave_ nothing here," said Drear, "_Seek_ nothing here. Sickness and death are within our doors: we are accursed."

"I would fain offer consolation, and observe the nature of your illness," said Dismal. "I would inform the leech, or even summon _other_ aid in your need."

"Who is it speaks?" said Drear, thrusting his head further out. "All, I see! Hence, screech-owl--bird of ill; hence, wretch, lest I come down and beat thee! Hence, hound, whose bark never boded aught but death to the sick man. We wanted but thy visit to make us certain of our fate."

So saying, Drear violently put up his shutter and withdrew.

"Ah," said Dismal, "you may talk, my master, till you've tired yourself.

But I know all about it now. If I cannot get _in_, by my troth I'll take care to put a sign which shall hinder you from getting _out_. Plague or no plague, I'll cause them to look in upon you who have authority to do so." So saying. Master Dismal took a large lump of red ochre from his pocket, and with considerable care marked up a broad red cross upon the door. He then, as he knew it was about the hour the watch pa.s.sed, quietly withdrew to the opposite side of the street, and ensconsing himself behind the b.u.t.tress of a wall, waited the event.

In a short time the watch came up; they pa.s.sed Master Dismal where he stood without discovering him and then proceeded to the very end of the street. According to their custom (in making the rounds at night) they then halted, ordered their pikes, trimmed their lights, and stood at ease for a few minutes, ere they returned down the other side of the street; examining each door they pa.s.sed by holding up the light they carried.

At the first tenement they found nothing extraordinary, the fellow who carried the light, which was a sort of cresset at the end of a bar of iron, held it aloft, and as its lurid glare fell upon the house, it displayed its walls clear as in open daylight. "All right, pa.s.s," said the head constable, and so they pa.s.sed on to the next.

Here the constable carrying the cresset was merely about to raise it and pa.s.s on, when, as he did so, the whole party were arrested in speechless alarm by a sign they knew too well from former visitation. "The plague!"

said the first, in a voice modulated almost to a whisper. "The plague!"

said the second, "why I heard not of it before." "The searcher's mark,"

said the second, "I knew not that he had been sent out." "Advance your light again, Diccon," said a third, "and observe if the house be padlocked up." "I see no fastening," said Diccon, "and yet, 'tis the searcher's mark, sure enough; pa.s.s on, in heaven's name, comrades;" and on pa.s.sed the watch, no longer with measured tread, but with accelerated and fearful steps, to inform the headborough of what they had seen: Master Dismal stealing after them in a state of the most exuberant glee at his own conceit and its success.

The spread of the disease, as was usual at this period, was extremely rapid. Indeed, it had risen to some height in the town before the authorities would consent to believe it really existed. In such cases, and in former days, precautionary measures were seldom thought of. Men drove off all thought of the evil; when they found it was really amongst them, or what they feared, they kept to themselves. At first they turned sulky under the infliction, if we may so term it, barring up their doors and deserting the streets; they avoided each other as much as possible, seeking air and recreation and forgetfulness by taking to the wastes and commons around. Leaving their homes by the back doors, they almost deserted the streets in search of the necessaries of life. As it grew worse the town seemed depopulated, even before the disease had time to work, so empty were its streets.

But a few days had pa.s.sed since all the out-door sports and diversions of the age and the season had been in full play. Those gay and jovial May-day games, in the quaint mazes of the wanton green; those rural fetes and diversions--the wakes and revels--the May-pole dances--the parties of pleasure--into the shadowy desert unfrequented woods, and which the peasantry of old were so fond of, all had ceased as it were on the instant. The human mortals feared each other, a secret dread--however each member of a family kept the native colour of his cheek--was in the heart of each. The very air seemed infected, and tho aspect of the town took a ghastly hue. It smelt of death, men thought.

Business stopped in it. No markets were attended. No strangers pa.s.sed through it. It was a place infected, avoided, accursed.

CHAPTER XX.

MORE TROUBLE AT CLOPTON.

Meanwhile, as misfortunes seldom come but in battalions, Sir Hugh Clopton (even before he had heard of the appearance of the disease) had been arrested of high treason, and carried off to London with several other gentlemen of condition in the county, and who had likewise been mixed up in the confession of Master Walter Neville.

It is indeed hardly possible to describe the dire confusion which ensued upon this unexpected event taking place on the night of the feast at Clopton Hall. Sir Hugh himself was the only person of his household and family who seemed to retain his self-command. Walter Arderne would, at first, have fain struck down the Queen's officer and expelled his men.

The faithful Martin was almost distraught. The serving men and retainers were scared and indignant at the same time; and the guests in a state of astonishment and dismay.

"Heed it not, my masters all," said Sir Hugh, "'tis a mistake altogether. I a traitor to our blessed Queen! pah. I would she had but such traitors in all her foes; methinks I know where this matter originates, and shall set it right upon examination."

"I hope so," said the officer; "Nevertheless, there is one other I am to secure within your household, but my people have just learnt he hath fled on our approach."

"In the name of Heaven," said Sir Hugh, "who else lays under this strange misconception?"