WHEN HE DRAGGED Mrs. Maggot down the stairs to leave her for the dead-cart he gave the guard five guineas not to make a report to the parish-clerk; he wanted no more nurses in the house. For now he was well enough to take care of Amber himself, though it might be difficult for several more days.
The next morning he found that Mrs. Maggot had left the kitchen in even worse condition than Sykes. It stank with the spoilage of rotten fruit and vegetables, the meat was a mass of weaving worms, and the bread was covered with green mould. There was nothing there which was edible and since he was not yet able to clean up the mess or cook anything himself, he sent the guard to a tavern for a prepared meal.
But as the days went by he grew gradually stronger and though at first he had to rest after each small task he finally got all the rooms cleaned again. And one day while Amber was sleeping he moved her into the freshly-made bed and from then on occupied the trundle himself. Both of them joked about his housekeeping and cooking—which he did as soon as he was well enough—and the first time she laughed was when she woke up one morning to see him, naked but for a towel tied about his waist, sweeping the floor. She told him that she must have his recipes to give her next cook and asked him what method he used to get the sheets so white, saying that her laundress sometimes brought them back in worse condition than they were sent.
Soon he began going out to buy the food himself—for the guards had been withdrawn as useless—and found the streets almost empty.
The people were dying at the rate of 10,000 a week or more-it was a frightening insidious fact that of those who died a great percentage were never reported or even counted. Dead-carts came by at all hours, but in spite of that hundreds of bodies lay in the streets or were piled in the public squares, sometimes for days, while the rats swarmed over them. Many were half gnawed away before they were taken up for burial. The red cross was no longer chalked on the doors, but large printed posters were nailed up instead. Grass grew between the cobble-stones; thousands of houses were deserted and whole streets were barricaded and closed off, all their inhabitants having died or fled. Even the bells ceased tolling. The city lay perfectly still, hot and stinking.
Bruce talked to the shop-keepers, many of whom, like others who had remained behind, had shrugged off their earlier terrors. Death had become so common that a kind of scorn had replaced fear. The timid ones were shut tight in their houses and never ventured abroad. Others who went on with daily work and habits acquired a fatalism which sometimes was tempered by caution, but which more often was deliberately reckless. Mourning was now almost never seen, though at the end of the first week in September 2,000 were dying each day and almost every family had lost someone.
There were innumerable grotesque and terrible stories, heard on every hand, but none more terrible than what was actually happening. Instances of premature burial were widely known —partly because of the death-like coma which made the mistake natural, partly because nurses often took advantage of it to get the patient out of the way and plunder the house. There was the story of the butcher who was laid outside in his shroud for the dead-cart, which neglected to carry him off, and who regained consciousness the following morning. He was said to be alive and almost well again. One man escaped from his house, raving mad, and jumped into the Thames, swam across it, and recovered. Another man, left alone, knocked over a candle and burned himself to death in his bed. A young woman discovered a plague-spot on her baby, dashed out its brains against the wall of a house and ran along the street, shrieking.
The first day that Bruce was able to go out he walked the half-mile or so to Almsbury House, let himself in with his key, and went up to the apartments he had always occupied to get some fresh clothing. What he had on he took off and burned. There were a couple of servants who had been left as caretakers—for many of the great empty houses were now being entered and robbed by thieves and beggars—and they had been shut in there for more than two months. They refused to come near him but shouted out questions, and were much relieved when he left.
