“She must live, she must not die!” cried Maria, frantic with grief and yet full of hope, like a true mother, who cannot grasp the thought that she is condemned to lose her child, even when the little heart is already ceasing to beat and the bright eyes are growing dim and closing. “Bessie, Bessie, look at me! Bessie, take this nice milk. Only a few drops! Bessie, Bessie, you must not die.”
Peter had entered the room unobserved and heard the last words. Holding his breath, he gazed down at his darling, his broad shoulders shook, and in a stifled, faltering voice he asked the physician: “Must she die?”
“Yes, old friend; I think so! Hold up your head! You have much still left you. All five of Van Loo’s children have died of the plague.”
Peter shuddered, and without taking any notice of Maria, passed from the room with drooping head. Bontius followed him into his study, laid his hand on his arm, and said:
“Our little remnant of life is made bitter to us, Peter. Barbara says a corpse was laid before your door early this morning.”
“Yes. When I went out, the livid face offered me a morning greeting. It was a young person. All whom death mows down, the people lay to my charge. Wherever one looks--corpses! Whatever one hears--curses! Have I authority over so many lives? Day and night nothing but sorrow and death before my eyes;--and yet, yet, yet--oh God! save me from madness!”
Peter clasped both hands over his brow; but Bontius found no word of comfort, and merely exclaimed: “And I, and I? My wife and child ill with a fever, day and night on my feet, not to cure, but to see people die. What has been learned by hard study becomes childish folly in these days, and yet the poor creatures utter a sigh of hope when I feel their pulses. But this can’t go on, this can’t go on. Day before yesterday seventy, yesterday eighty-six deaths, and among them two of my colleagues.”
“To-morrow the ninety will become a hundred--the one hundred will become two, three, four, five, until at last one individual will be left, for whom there will be no grave-digger.”
“The pest-houses are closed, and we still have cattle and horses.”
“But the pestilence creeps through the joints, and since the last loaf of bread and the last malt-cake have been divided, and there is nothing for the people to eat except meat, meat, and nothing else--one tiny piece for the whole day--disease is piled on disease in forms utterly unprecedented, of which no book speaks, for which no remedy has yet been discovered. This drawing water with a bottomless pitcher is beginning to be too much for me. My brain is no stronger than yours. Farewell until to-morrow.”