But after that she always knew when he was conscious, and little by little he began to talk to her, though it was many days before he could say more than a few words at a time. And she did not urge him to talk for she knew how great was the exertion and how tired it left him. His eyes often followed her when she was in the room and in them she saw a look of gratitude that wrenched her heart. She wanted to tell him that she had not done so very much—only what she had to do because she loved him, and that she had never been happier than during these past days when she had used all her energy, all the strength she had, every thought and waking minute for him. Whatever had been between them in the past, whatever was to come in the future, she had had these few weeks when he belonged to her completely.
Day by day London was changing.
Gradually the vendors disappeared from the streets, and with them went the age-old cries which had rung through the town for centuries. Many shops had closed and the ’prentices no longer stood before their stalls, bawling out their wares to the passerby—the shop-keepers were afraid of the customers, the customers were afraid of the shop-keepers. Friends looked the other way when they passed, or crossed the street to avoid speaking. Many were afraid to buy food, for fear it might be contaminated, and some of them starved to death.
The theatres had closed in May and now many taverns and inns and cook-shops were shut up. Those which continued to do business were ordered to lock their doors at nine o’clock and to put all loiterers off the premises. There were no more bear-baitings, cock-fights, jugglers’ performances, or puppet-shows; even the executions were suspended, for they invariably drew great crowds. Funerals were forbidden, but nevertheless long trains of mourners were to be seen winding through the streets at almost every hour of the day or night.
And in spite of the great fear of the disease, the churches were always crowded. Many of the orthodox ministers had fled, but the Nonconformists remained and harangued the confused, miserable multitudes for their sins. The prostitutes had never been busier. A rumour began to spread that the surest protection against plague was a venereal disease and the whorehouses of Vinegar Yard, Saffron Hill, and Nightingale Lane were open twenty-four hours a day. Harlots and customers often died together, and their bodies were carried out by a back door to avoid offending those who waited in the parlour. An increasing attitude of fatalism made many say that they would enjoy whatever was left to them of life, and die when their turn came. Others rushed to consult astrologers and fortunetellers and anyone might set himself up as a soothsayer with the prospect of a very good business.
Searchers-of-the-dead walked in every street. It was their duty to inspect the dead and to report to the parish-clerk the cause of death. They were a group of old women, illiterate and dishonest as the nurses, forced to live apart from society during a time of sickness and to carry a white stick wherever they went so that others might know them and stop up their mouths as they passed.
The town grew steadily quieter. The busy shipping of the Thames lay still—no ships might enter or leave the river—and the noisy swearing impudent boatmen had all but disappeared. Forty thousand dogs and two hundred thousand cats were slaughtered, for it was believed that they were carriers of the sickness. It was possible to hear, far up into the City, the roaring of the water between the starlings of London Bridge—a noise which usually went unnoticed. Only the bells continued to ring—tolling, tolling, tolling for the dead.
It soon became impossible to bury the dead in separate graves, and huge pits—forty feet long and twenty feet deep—were dug at the edge of the city. Every night the bodies were brought there, some of them decently in coffins, more and more shrouded only in a sheet or naked, as they had died. In the grave they found a common anonymity. During the day crows and ravens settled there, but at the approach of a man they swarmed up into the air, circling and hovering, waiting until he was gone, and then they drifted earthward again. As the bodies began to rot a foul stench crept into the town, and there was no breath of moving air to dispel it.
There had never been a hotter summer. The sky was bright as brass, blue and without a shred of cloud; they thought of the cool soothing fog as a blessing. Large birds flew heavily and laboriously. The church-vanes scarcely turned. In the meadows about London the grass lay burnt and the earth was hard as brick, flowers withered and dried. Amber transplanted some of the stocks, pink and white ones with a spicy cinnamon smell, into pots and kept them shaded on the balcony, but they did not prosper.
