"Joan! Thou here, and at such a time as this!"

And then they both stood motionless for a few long moments, feeling that despite the terrible scenes around and about them, the very gates of Paradise had opened before them, turning everything around them to gold.

CHAPTER XXI. THE OLD, OLD STORY

The scourge had pa.s.sed. It had swept over the length and breadth of the region of which Guildford formed the centre, and had done its terrible work of destruction there, leaving homes desolated and villages almost depopulated. It was still raging in London, and was hurrying northward and eastward with all its relentless energy and deadliness; but in most of the places thus left behind its work seemed to be fully accomplished, and there were no fresh cases.

People began to go about their business as of old. Those who had fled returned to their homes, and strove to take up the scattered threads of life as best they might. In many cases whole families had been swept out of existence; in others (more truly melancholy cases), one member had escaped when all the rest had perished. The religious houses were crowded with the helpless orphans of the sufferers in the epidemic, and the summer crops lay rotting in the fields for want of labourers to get them in.

John"s house in Guildford had by this time rea.s.sumed its normal aspect.

The last of the sick who had not been carried to the grave, but had recovered to return home, had now departed, with many a blessing upon the master, whose act of piety and charity had doubtless saved so many lives at this crisis. The work the young man had set himself to do had been n.o.bly accomplished; but the task had been one beyond his feeble strength, and he now lay upon a couch of sickness, knowing well, if others did not, that his days were numbered.

He had fallen down in a faint upon the very day that the last patient had been able to leave his doors. For a moment it was feared that the poison of the distemper had fastened upon him; but it was not so. The attack was but due to the failure of the heart"s action -- nature, tried beyond her powers of endurance, a.s.serting herself at last -- and they laid him down in his old favourite haunt, with his books around him, having made the place look like it did before the house had been turned into a veritable hospital and mortuary.

When John opened his eyes at last it was to find Joan bending over him; and looking into her face with his sweet, tired smile, he said:

"You will not leave me, Joan?"

"No," she answered gently; "I will not leave you yet. Bridget and I will nurse you. All our other helpers are themselves worn out; but we have worked only a little while. We have not borne the burden and heat of that terrible day."

"You came in a good hour -- like angels of mercy that you were," said John, feeling, now that the long strain and struggle was over, a wonderful sense of rest and peace. "I thought it was a dream when first I saw your face, Joan -- when I saw you moving about amongst the sick, always with a child in your arms. I have never been able to ask how you came hither. In those days we could never stay to talk. There are many things I would fain ask now. How come you here alone, save for your old nurse? Are your parents dead likewise?"

"I know not that myself," answered Joan, with the calmness that comes from constantly standing face to face with death. "I have heard naught of them these many weeks. William goes ofttimes to Woodcrych to seek for news of them there. But they have not returned, and he can learn nothing."

And then whilst John lay with closed eyes, his face so white and still that it looked scarce the face of a living man, Joan told him all her tale; and he understood then how it was that she had suddenly appeared amongst them like a veritable angel of mercy.

When her story was done, he opened his eyes and said:

"Where is Raymond?"

"They told me he was sleeping an hour since," answered Joan. "He has sore need of sleep, for he has been watching and working night and day for longer than I may tell. He looks little more than a shadow himself; and he has had Roger to care for of late, since he fell ill."

"But Roger is recovering?"

"Yes. It was the distemper, but in its least deadly form, and he is already fast regaining his strength.

"Has Raymond been the whole time with you? I have never had the chance to speak to him of himself."

And a faint soft flush awoke in Joan"s cheek, whilst a smile hovered round the corners of her lips.

"Nor I; yet there be many things I would fain ask of him. He went forth to be with Father Paul when first the Black Death made its fatal entry into the country; and from that day forth I heard naught of him until he came hither to me. We will ask him of himself when he comes to join us.

It will be like old times come back again when thou, Joan, and he and I gather about the Yule log, and talk together of ourselves and others."

A common and deadly peril binds very closely together those who have faced it and fought it hand in hand and shoulder to shoulder; and in those days of divided houses, broken lives, and general disruption of all ordinary routine in domestic existence, things that in other times would appear strange and unnatural were now taken as a matter of course.

It did not occur to Joan as in any way remarkable that she should remain in John"s house, nursing him with the help of Bridget, and playing a sister"s part until some of his own kith or kin returned. He had been deserted by all of his own name. She herself knew not whether she had any relatives living. Circ.u.mstances had thrown her upon his hospitality, and she had looked upon him almost as a brother ever since the days of her childhood.

She knew that he was dying; there was that in his face which told as much all too well to those who had long been looking upon death. To have left him at such a moment would have seemed far more strange and unnatural than to remain. In those times of terror stranger things were done daily, no man thinking aught of it.

So she smiled as she heard John"s last words, trying to recall the day when she had first seen Raymond at Master Bernard"s house, when he had seemed to her little more than a boy, albeit a very knightly and chivalrous one. Now her feelings towards him were far different: not that she thought less of his knightliness and chivalry, but that she was half afraid to let her mind dwell too much upon him and her thoughts of him; for of late, since they had been toiling together in the hand-to-hand struggle against disease and death, she was conscious of a feeling toward him altogether new in her experience, and his face was seldom out of her mental vision. The sound of his voice was ever in her ears; and she always knew, by some strange intuition, when he was near, whether she could see him or not.

She knew even as John spoke that he was approaching; and as the latch of the door clicked a soft wave of colour rose in her pale cheek, and she turned her head with a gesture that spoke a mute welcome.

"They tell me that thou art sick, good John," said Raymond, coming forward into the bright circle of the firelight.

The dancing flames lit up that pale young face, worn and hollow with long watching and stress of work, and showed that Raymond had changed somewhat during those weeks of strange experience. Some of the dreaminess had gone out of the eyes, to be replaced by a luminous steadfastness of expression which had always been there, but was now greatly intensified. Pure, strong, and n.o.ble, the face was that of a man rather than a boy, and yet the bright, almost boyish, alertness and eagerness were still quickly apparent when he entered into conversation, and turned from one companion to another. It was the same Raymond -- yet with a difference; and both of his companions scanned him with some curiosity as he took his seat beside John"s couch and asked of his cousin"s welfare.

"Nay, trouble not thyself over me; thou knowest that my life"s sands are well-nigh run out. I have been spared for this work, that thou, my Raymond, gavest me to do. I am well satisfied, and thou must be the same, my kind cousin. Only let me have thee with me to the end -- and sweet Mistress Joan, if kind fortune will so favour us. And tell us now of thyself, Raymond, and how it fared with thee before thou camest hither. Hast thou been with Father Paul? And if so, why didst thou leave him? Is he, too, dead?"

"He was not when we parted; he went forward to London when he bid me come to see how it fared with thee, good John, and bring thee his blessing. I should have been with thee one day earlier, save that I turned aside to Basildene, where I heard that the old man lay dying alone."

"Basildene!" echoed both his hearers quickly. "Has the Black Death been there?"

"Ay, and the old man who is called a sorcerer is dead. To me it was given to soothe his dying moments, and give him such Christian burial as men may have when there be no priest at hand to help them to their last rest. I was in time for that."

"Peter Sanghurst dead!" mused John thoughtfully; and looking up at Raymond, he said quickly, "Did he know who and what thou wert?"

"He did; for in his delirium he took me for my mother, and his terror was great, knowing her to be dead. When I told him who I was, he was right glad; and he would fain have made over to me the deeds by which he holds Basildene -- the deeds my mother left behind her in her flight, and which he seized upon. He would fain have made full reparation for that one evil deed of his life; but his son, who had held aloof hitherto, and would have left his father to die untended and alone --"

Joan had uttered a little exclamation of horror and disgust; now she asked, quickly and almost nervously:

"The son -- Peter Sanghurst? O Raymond, was that bad man there?"

"Yes; and he knows now who and what I am, whereby his old hatred to me is bitterly increased. He holds that I have hindered and thwarted him before in other matters. Now that he knows I have a just and lawful claim on Basildene, which one day I will make good, he hates me with a tenfold deadlier hatred."

"Hates you -- when you came to his father in his last extremity? How can he dare to hate you now?"

Raymond smiled a shadowy smile as he looked into the fire.

"Methinks he knows little of filial love. He knew that his father had been stricken with the distemper, but he left him to die alone. He would not have come nigh him at all, save that he heard sounds in the house, and feared that robbers had entered, and that his secret treasure h.o.a.rds might fall into their hands. He had come down armed to the teeth to resist such marauders, being willing rather to stand in peril of the distemper than to lose his ill-gotten gold. But he found none such as he thought; yet having come, and having learned who and what manner of man I was, he feared to leave me alone with his father, lest I should be told the secret of the hidden h.o.a.rd, which the old man longed to tell me but dared not. Doubtless the parchment he wished to place in my hands is there; but his son hovered ever within earshot, and the old man dared not speak. Yet with his last breath he called me lord of Basildene, and charged me to remove from it the curse which in his own evil days had fallen upon the place."

"Peter Sanghurst will not love you the more for that," said John.

"Verily no; yet methinks he can scarce hate me more than he does and has done for long."

"He is no insignificant foe," was the thoughtful rejoinder. "His hate may be no light thing."

"He has threatened me oft and savagely," answered Raymond, "and yet no harm has befallen me therefrom."

"Why has he threatened thee?" asked Joan breathlessly; "what hast thou done to raise his ire?"

"We a.s.sisted Roger, the woodman"s son, to escape from that vile slavery at Basildene, of which doubtless thou hast heard, sweet lady. That was the first cause of offence."

"And the second?"

Raymond"s clear gaze sought her face for a moment, and Joan"s dark eyes kindled and then slowly dropped.