“There are my mother and sister,” said Nell. “We must take them with us.”
Charles Hart had seen her mother; he shuddered at the prospect of even five minutes spent in her company.
“’Tis quite impossible,” he said.
“Then what will become of her?”
“Doubtless she will drown her sorrow at losing you, in the gin bottle.”
“What if she takes the plague?”
“Then, my little Nell, she will take the plague.”
“Who would care for her?”
“Your sister doubtless.”
“What if she also took the plague?”
“You waste precious time. I wish to leave at once. Every unnecessary minute spent in this polluted place is courting danger.”
Nell planted her small feet on the floor and, placing her hands on her hips, struck what he called her fish-wife attitude, since it was doubtless picked up when she sold fresh herrings at ten a groat.
“When I go,” she said, “my family goes with me.”
“So you choose your family instead of me?” said Hart. “Very well, Madam. You have made your choice.”
Then he left her, and when he had gone she was sad, because she loved him well enough, and she knew that being unable to act he was a melancholy man. And she was a fool. What, she asked herself, did she owe to the gin-sodden old woman who had beaten and bullied her when she was able, and whined to her when she was not?
She went to Cole-yard; and as she passed into that alley Nell’s heart was merry no longer, for on many of the doors were painted large red crosses beneath which were written the words “Lord have mercy upon us.”
Nell stayed in the cellar, with Rose and her mother, for several days and nights. Occasionally either Nell or her sister went out into the streets to see if they could find food. There was scarcely anyone about now, and grass was growing between the cobbles. Sometimes in their wanderings they would see sufferers by the roadside, struck down as they walked through the streets, displaying the fatal signs of shivering, nausea, delirium. Once Nell approached an old woman, because she felt she could not pass her by without offering help, but the woman had opened her eyes and stared at Nell, shouting: “You’re Mrs. Nelly. Stay away from me.” Then she tore open her bodice and showed the terrible macula on her breast.
Nell hurried away, feeling sick and afraid, aware that she could do nothing to help the old woman.
They lived this cellar existence for some weeks, occasionally venturing out and returning, feeling desolate and melancholy to see a great city so stricken. During the night they heard the gloomy notes of the bell which told them that the pest-cart was passing that way. They heard the sepulchral cry echoing through the deserted streets: “Bring out your dead.” Nell had seen the naked bodies passed out of windows and tumbled into the cart just as they were, body upon body since there was no time to provide coffins; there were no mourners to follow the dead to their graves; the cart went its dismal way to the burial ground on the outskirts of the city where the bodies were thrown into a pit.
Then one day Nell cried: “We can no longer stay here. If we do we shall die of melancholy if not of the plague.”
“Let us to Oxford,” said her mother. “Your father has relations there. Mayhap they would take us in till this scourge be gone.”
And so they made their way out of the stricken city. That night they slept in the shelter of a hedge; and Nell felt her spirits lifted in the sweet country air.
TWO
It was nearly two years later when Nell came back to London. Life was not easy in Oxford. She had gone back to selling fruit and fish when she could lay her hands on it. Rose worked with her, and the two girls from London, so sprightly and so pretty, were able to keep themselves and their mother alive during those two years.
News came from London—terrible news which set them all wondering whether they would ever return there. Travellers brought it to Oxford during the month of September, a year after Nell and her family had arrived there. Nell, eager for news of what was happening in Drury Lane and whether the players were back, heard instead of the disastrous fire which had broken out at a baker’s shop in Pudding Lane and quickly spread until half the city was ablaze. The wild rumors reaching Oxford were numerous. Many declared that this was the end of London, and that not a house was left standing; that the King and all his Court had been burned to death.
Nell for once was speechless. She stood still, thinking of Drury Lane and that squalid alley where she had spent most of her life, the old Cole-yard; she thought of Covent Garden, the Hop Garden and St. Martin’s Lane. She thought of the playhouse—that which she thought of as her own—and that rival house, both furiously burning.
“’Tis the judgment of God on a wicked city,” some people declared.
Rose cast down her eyes, but Nell was shrilly indignant. London had not been wicked, she cried; it was merry and full of pleasure, and she for one refused to believe that it was a sin to laugh and enjoy life.
But she was too wretched to retort with her wonted spirit.
Each day there came fresh rumors. They heard that the people had thrown the furniture from their houses and packed it into barges; that the flames had spanned the river; how the wooden houses on London Bridge had blazed; how the King and his brother the Duke had worked together to prevent the fire from spreading; that it had been necessary to use gunpowder and blow gaps in the rows of highly inflammable wooden houses.
And at length came good news.
It came from a gentleman riding through Oxford from London, a prelate who mourned the restoration of the King and looked yearningly back at the puritanism of the Protectorate.
Riding to Banbury, he stopped at Oxford and, seeing that he was a traveller who had doubtless come from London, Nell approached him, not to ask him to buy her herrings, but for news.
He looked at her with disapproval. No woman of virtue, he was sure, could look like this one. That luxuriant hair allowed to flow in riotous disorder, those hazel eyes adorned with the darkest of lashes and brows—such a contrast to the reddish tints in her hair—those plump cheeks and pretty teeth, those dimples and, above all, that pert nose, could not belong to a virtuous woman.
Nell dipped in a charming curtsy which would have become a lady of high rank and which Charles Hart had taught her.
“I see, fair sir, that you hie from London,” she addressed him. “I would fain have news of that town.”
“Ask me not for news of Babylon!” cried the good man.
“Nay, sir, I will not,” answered Nell. “’Tis of London I ask.”
“They are one and the same.”
Nell dropped her eyes demurely. “I hie from London, fair sir. Is it in your opinion a fit place for a poor woman to go home to?”
“I tell ye, ’tis Babylon itself. ’Tis full of whores and cutthroats.”
“More so than Oxford, sir … or Banbury?”
He looked at her suspiciously. “You mock me, woman,” he said. “You should go to London. Clearly ’tis where you belong. In that cesspool everywhere one looks one sees rubble in the streets—the evidence of God’s vengeance … and these people of London, what do they do? They make merry with their taverns and their playhouses….”
“You said playhouses!” cried Nell.
“God forgive them, I did.”
“And may He preserve you, sir, for such good news.”
A few days later she, with Rose and her mother, caught the stage wagon and, after a slow and tedious journey travelling two miles to the hour and sitting uncomfortably on the floor of the wagon as the wagoner led the horses over the rough roads, they were jolted to London.