CHAPTER XXII
THE STRICKEN CITY
Whatever effect such musings might have brought forth, even to bloodshed, had Walter Clarges continued to ride close behind the carriage containing his enemy-of which fact he was, in actual truth, profoundly unconscious-cannot be told, since, scarcely had Desparre given way to those musings, than events shaped themselves into so different a form that the idea with regard to the pistols was at once abandoned.
For, ere the summit of the ascent, which was in itself a trifling one, had been reached by both the berceuse and the rider following it, Desparre was surprised-nay, startled-to discover that the man he dreaded so much was not by any possibility tracking him; that the pursuit of him was not his object.
Clarges had ridden past the carriage almost immediately after coming up with it; he had gone on ahead of it-and that rapidly, too-directly after reaching level ground once more.
"Startled" is, indeed, the word most fitting to express the feelings of the man who had but a moment before been quivering with excitement-with nervous fear-within his carriage, not knowing whether his end was close at hand or not. He had felt so sure that the presence of that other, in this region so remote from where they had ever met before, could only be due to the fact that Clarges was in search of and in pursuit of him, that, when he discovered such was not the case, his amazement was extreme. Since, if Clarges sought not him, for whom did he look? Was it the woman who had become his wife? Yet, if so, how did he know that she was, had been, near this spot, even if, by now, already gone far away across the sea whose nearest waters sparkled by this time in the morning sun. For Marseilles was close at hand; another league or so, and Desparre would have reached that city-would know the worst. He would know whether his child had departed to that distant, remote colony, or had died on the roadside ere reaching the city. But his freedom from the presence of that man, of that avenger-even though it might be only momentary-even though the Englishman might only have taken a place in front of the horses instead of riding behind the carriage-enabled him to reflect more calmly now on what the future would probably bring forth when he came into contact with his enemy-as come he must. In those reflections he began to understand that vengeance could scarcely be taken upon him, sinner though he was. Clarges had married the daughter-he could not slay the father. No! not although that father had plotted to slay him-had in truth, nearly slain him by the hands of others. Not although he had himself taken such hideous vengeance on that daughter, not knowing who she was.
But, did the Englishman know all, or, if he were told of what was absolutely the case, would he believe, would-?
A cry, a commotion ahead, broke in upon his meditations, his hopes of personal salvation from a violent death. The carriage stopped with a jerk and he heard sudden and excited talking. What was the reason? Had Clarges suddenly faced round and ordered the coachman to halt ere he proceeded to exercise his vengeance on the master-had he? What could have happened? A moment later, the valet, aroused from his heavy, perhaps guilty, slumbers, had thrust aside the curtain which separated the bed-chamber (for so it was termed) from the fore part of the berceuse, and was standing half in, half out, of the little room, undressed as yet and with a look of agony; almost, indeed, a look of horror, on his features.
"Oh! Monsieur, Monsieur le Duc," he gasped, "there is terrible news. Terrible. We cannot go forward."
"Cannot go forward!" Desparre ejaculated. "Why not? Has that man-that man who passed us endeavoured to stop the carriage?"
"No, Monsieur. No. But-but they flee from the city; in hundreds they flee. There are some outside already, Marseilles is-"
"What?"
"Stricken with the pest. They die like flies; they lie in thousands unburied in the streets. It is death to enter it. Nay, more," and the man shook all over, "it is death to be here."
"My God! Marseilles stricken again. Yet we must go on. We must, I say. Where is that-that cavalier who overtook-rode past us?"
"He has gone on, Monsieur le Duc. He would not be stayed, though warned also. The people, the fugitives-there are a score at the inn a few yards ahead of where we are-warned him to turn back ere too late, and told him it was death to approach the city; that, here even, so near to it, the air is infected, tainted, poisonous! He heeded them not but said his mission was itself one of life or death, and that this news made that mission-his reaching the city at once-even more imperative. Oh! Monsieur le Duc, for God's sake give the orders to turn back."
"Fool, poltroon, be silent So, also, by this news, if it be true, is my reaching the city become more imperative. Where is this crowd, this inn you speak of?"
It was natural he should ask the question, since the bed-chamber of the berceuse had no other window but the little one at the back out of which its occupant could gaze.
"Where," he repeated, "is the crowd-the inn?"
"Close outside, Monsieur; but, oh! in the name of all the Saints, go not forth. It is death! It is death!"
"It is death if I do aught but go on," the Duke muttered to himself; "death to her if she is there and cannot be saved." And, at that moment, Desparre was at his best. Even this man of vile record was dominated by some good angel now.
As he spoke, he pushed the valet aside and, shambling through the still smaller compartment outside the curtain in which the fellow slept and cooked, he appeared on the little platform beneath where the coachman and a footman sat, and from which it was easy by a step to reach the ground.
"What is this I hear of the pestilence at Marseilles?" he asked, as, seeing in front of him an inn before which his carriage was drawn up, as well as a number of strange, sickly-looking beings huddled about in front of it-some lying on wooden benches running alongside tables and some upon the ground-he addressed them. "What? Answer me."
Yet he knew that no answer was required. One glance at those beings told all, especially to him who had once known the pest raging in Catalonia and had seen the ravages it made, and once also at Bordeaux. Those chalk-white faces, those yellow eyes and the great blotches beneath them, were enough. These people might not be absolutely stricken with the pestilence, yet they had almost been so ere they fled.
"We have escaped," one answered, "though it may be only for a time. It is in us. We burn with thirst, shiver with cold. On such a morn as this! Marseilles is lost! Already forty thousand lie dead in her; they pile quicklime on them in the streets to burn them up. At Aix ten thousand are dead-at Toulon ten thousand; thousands more at a hundred other places. Turn back. Turn back, whosoever you are; be warned in time."
"Man," Desparre answered, "we have passed by Aix, yet we are not stricken. I must go on," and his white face blanched even whiter while his eyes rested on those unhappy people. Yet all the same, he did not, would not, falter. He had vowed that his attempt to save his child should act as his redemption if such might be the case; he would never turn back! No, not though the pest awaited him with its fiery poisonous breath at the gates; not even though the Englishman stood before him with his drawn sword ready to be thrust through his heart. He would go on.
He felt positive, something within warned him, that his hour was not far off. And also some strange presentiment seemed to tell him that by, or through, the pest his death was to come-not by the man whom he had himself striven to slay.
Partly he was wrong, partly he was right. An awful penalty awaited him for his misdeeds as well as through his misdeeds, though how the blow was to be struck he had not truly divined.
"Who," he asked, still standing on the platform of his carriage with his richly-embroidered sleeping gown around him, "are there besides the Marseillais? Are-there-any-strangers?"
"Strangers. Nay, nay! Strangers. Bon Dieu! Does Monsieur think strangers seek Marseilles now, when even we, the Marseillais, flee from it? When we leave our houses, our goods, sometimes our own flesh and blood, behind? Who should be there?"
"The commerce is great," he replied. "To all parts of the world go forth ships laden with merchandise. All traffic, all commerce cannot be stopped, even by such a scourge as this!"
"Not stopped!" the man replied. "Monsieur, you do not know. It is impossible that monsieur should understand. There are no ships; they lie out at sea. They will not approach. None, except the galleys. Their cargo counts not."
For a moment the Duke made no reply, while his eyes wandered from that group of fugitives to the people gazing forth from the inn window; to, also, his own servants looking paralysed with fear as they stood about, all having left the berceuse temporarily and crossed to the other side of the road so as not to be too near to the infected ones; then he said:
"There left Paris some weeks ago-many weeks now-two gangs of-of emigrant convicts for-for the New World. One cordon was of men, the other of-of women. Have they, are-are they there in that great pest house?" And he drew in his breath as he awaited the reply.
"The men are there."
"My God!" he whispered.
"They arrived yesterday."
"Have they sailed-put to sea? For New France?"
"I know not. There are, I tell monsieur, no ships. Those which were to transport those gallows' birds would not perhaps come in. They may have gone elsewhere."
"And the women?"
"I know not. If they are there, they will work in the streets-the men at burning and burying. The women at nursing."
"Have many persons there succumbed?"
"Many! Of those in the town almost half; at least a half."
Desparre asked no more questions but turned away, shaking at that last reply. Yet a moment later he returned to where the fugitives were (he was so white now that one whispered to another that already he was "struck"), took from his pocket a purse, and, shaking from it several gold pieces into his hand, held them out towards the poor creatures. Yet, even as he did so, he paused a moment, saying:
"Nay, do not come for them-there!" And he threw the coins towards where the people were huddled together.
For a moment they seemed astonished, even though he muttered, "Doubtless they will be of assistance," and he noticed that only one man in the small crowd picked them up-he with whom he had first conversed. But he saw a man whose head was out of the window smile, if the look upon his wretched face could be called by that name, whereby he was led to believe that the man who had last spoken was some rich merchant flying from the stricken city, even as the poorest and most humble fled. He understood that wealth made no difference in such a case as this.
He gave now the orders to proceed towards Marseilles, bidding his coachman and footman resume their places on the box, and his valet re-enter the berceuse. Instead, however, of doing so, they remained standing stolidly upon the farther side of the road muttering to themselves, shaking their heads, and looking into each other's eyes, as though seeking for support in their disobedience.
At last the coachman spoke, saying:
"Monsieur le Duc, we cannot go on. We-we dare not. This is no duty of ours-to risk our lives in this manner. No wages could repay us for doing that."
"You must go on," Desparre said; "you must conduct me to the gates of Marseilles. Beyond that, I demand no more. It is but two leagues. If I were not sick and ailing I would dismiss you here and walk into the city by myself. As it is, you must finish the journey. If not-"
"If not-what?" demanded the footman, speaking in an almost insolent tone. "What, Monsieur le Duc? These are not feudal days; there is no law here. All law is at an end, it seems; and-and, if it were not, no law ever made can compel us to meet death in this manner."
For a moment Desparre looked at the man, his eyes glistening from his pallid, sickly face; then he turned and slowly entered the berceuse. A moment later he reappeared upon the platform, and now he held within his hands his pistols. He was, however, too late. Whether the men had divined what he had intended to do and how he meant to coerce them, or whether they recognised that here was their chance-which might be their last one-of escaping from the horrible prospect of death that lay before them, at least they were gone, They had fled away the moment his back was turned, and had disappeared into a copse lying some distance from the road.
There remained, however, as Desparre supposed, Lolive; yet he recollected that he had been in neither of the compartments as he entered them. In an instant he understood that the man was gone too. The fellow had slid into the inn while his master had been inside the berceuse, and, passing swiftly through it to the back, had thereby made his own escape also.
Desparre would, in days not so long since past, have given way to some tempestuous gust of rage at this abandonment of him by his domestics, creatures who had been well paid and fed, even pampered, since they had been in his service and since he had come to affluence-he would have endeavoured to find them, and, had he done so, have shot them there and then. Yet now, either because he was a changed man in his disposition, or because his physical infirmities were so great, he did nothing beyond letting his glance rest upon the people standing about who had been witnesses of the desertion. Then, at last, he addressed them, haltingly-as he ever spoke now-his words coming with labour from between his lips.
"I am," he said, "a rich man. And-and-there is one in Marseilles dear to me, one whom I must save if I can. She is," the pause was very long here, "my daughter, and-heretofore-I have treated her evilly. I-must-see her if she be still alive; I must see her. If any here will drive my carriage to Marseilles he may demand of me what he will. Otherwise, I, feeble, sick, as I am, must do it myself. Even though I fall dead from the box to the ground in the attempt."
For a moment none spoke. None! not even those who, a short time back, would have performed so slight a task for a crown and have been glad to do it. Not one, though now, doubtless, a hundred pistoles would be forthcoming if asked from a man who travelled in so luxurious a manner. They knew what was in that city; they had had awful experience of the poisonous, infected breath that was mowing down thousands weekly, and, though some in the little crowd were of the poorest of the population, they did not stir to earn a golden reward. Gold, precious as it was, fell to insignificance before the preservation of their lives, squalid though such lives were even at the best of times.
A silence fell upon all; there was not one volunteer, not one who, meeting Desparre's imploring glance as it roved over them, responded to that glance. Then, suddenly, the man who had conversed with Desparre when last he appeared on the platform, the one who had taken no notice of the coins the latter tossed out in his sudden fit of charity, came forward and took in his hands the reins lying on the backs of the horses, and began to mount to the deserted box.
"I will drive you to the gates," he said quietly, "since your misery is so extreme. Yet, in God's grace, it must be less than mine. You may find this daughter of whom you speak alive even now-but for me-God two of mine are gone. I shall never see them again. As for your money, I need it not. I would have given a whole fleet of ships, a hundred thousand louis-I could have done it very well and not felt the loss-to have saved my children's lives. Oh! my children! My children! My children!" and, as he shook the reins, he wept piteously.
CHAPTER XXIII
WITHIN THE WALLS
Midnight sounded from the tower of the ancient cathedral of Marseilles-the deep tones of the bell, in unison with all the bells of the other churches in the stricken city, being borne across the upland by the soft breeze from off the Mediterranean to where the women of the cordon stood-and those women were free at last from one awful form of suffering. The hateful collar was gone from off their necks; the chains that looped and bound them together had fallen from their wrists under the blows of the convicts, and lay in a mass upon the ground. They could hold up their heads and straighten the backs which had been bowed so long by the weight of the collar; they could stretch their limbs and rejoice-if such women could ever rejoice again at aught! – that they might raise their arms unencumbered by either steel or iron shackles. Yet, around their necks, around their arms, were impressed livid marks that, if they should live, it would take months to efface. More months than it had taken to produce the impression which the things had stamped into their flesh.
Then the order was given by the Sheriff, that broken-hearted man, that they should descend into the city; the very tones in which it was uttered-so different from the harsh, cruel commands of the men who had escorted the forlorn women from Paris! – being almost enough to make compliance with that order easy.
"Come," said Marion Lascelles to Laure, "come, dear one. Even though we march into the jaws of death, at least we go no longer as slaves, but as freed women. Let be. Things might be worse. Had those cowardly dogs, our warders, stayed by our side we should have been whipped or cursed into this nest of pestilence."
So they went on, following their sorrowful guide; the men of the galleys marching near them and relating the awful ravages of the plague which had stricken the city. Yet not without some exclamations of satisfaction issuing from the lips of those outcasts and mingling with their story, since they dilated on the freedom which was now theirs-except at nights when they were re-conducted to the galleys moored by the Quai de Riveneuve; and on, also, the better class of food which-at present! but at present only-they were able to obtain. Upon, too, the almost certain fact of their being entirely pardoned and released when the pestilence should at last be over.
"Will that come to us-if we live?" murmured Laure to the man who walked by the side of her and of Marion. "Will anything we do here, and any dangers to life we encounter, give us our pardon; save us from voyaging to that unknown land?"
"Will it, ma belle!" answered the convict-a brawny, muscular, fellow, who would have been a splendid specimen of humanity but for the fact that he was gaunt and yellow and hideously disfigured by the white cloth steeped in vinegar which he wore swathed round his lower jaw, so that he might continuously inhale the aromatic flavour with each breath he drew. "Will it! Who can doubt it! And, if not, why-name, of a dog! – are we not free already?"
"Free! How?"
"In a manner we are so. What control is there over us-over you, especially? You will live in the streets-or, if you prefer it, in any house you choose to enter; have a care, though, that it is one from which the healthy have fled in fear, not one in which the dead lie poisoning the air. At any moment you can hide yourselves away. While for us-well, there will come a night when we shall not return to the galleys. That is all."
"Has," asked Marion, "a chain of male emigrants entered Marseilles but a few hours before us? They should have done so, seeing that they were not more than a day in advance."
"Yes, yes. They have come. Yet their fortune was different; better or worse than yours, according to how one regards it. One of the merchant ships was still in the port-off the port-a league out to sea, and, well, they risked it. They took the human cargo; they are gone for New France. Had you a man amongst them whom you loved, my black beauty?" he asked, gazing into the dark eyes of Marion, those eyes whose splendour not all she had gone through could dull.
"My husband was amongst them," she replied quietly; while, to herself, she added: "Poor wretch! He did little enough good in marrying me. Yet this leaves me free to devote myself to her."
"Your husband," the convict exclaimed with a laugh. "Your husband? Good! he will never claim you. You can take another if you desire-the first one who falls in love with those superb glances."
"Vagabond! be still," she answered, with such a look from the very eyes he had been praising that the man was silent.
They were by now close to the northern gate of Marseilles; and here for a little while they halted, the Sheriff, whose name was Le Vieux-and who is still remembered there for his acts of mercy and goodness to all-addressing some archers who formed a group outside the gate, and bidding them produce food and wine, as well as some vinegar-steeped cloths for the neck of each woman.
"Who are they?" asked another Sheriff, who came up at this moment, while he scanned the worn and emaciated women and ran his eyes over their dusty and weather-stained clothes. "Surely you are not bringing to our charnel house the refugees from other stricken towns? Not from Toulon and Arles?"
"Nay," replied Le Vieux, "not so. But women who may, by God's grace, be yet of some service to those left alive. If there are any!" he added ominously. Then he asked: "What is the count to-day?"
The other shrugged his shoulders ere he replied:
"There is no count. It is abandoned. Who shall count? The tellers die themselves ere the record is made. Poublanc made a list yesterday-now-"
"He is not dead? My God I he is not dead?" The other nodded his head solemnly. After which he said:
"He lies on his doorstep-dead. He was struck this morning-now-!"
* * * * * *
It was a charnel-house to which the Cordon entered! The second Sheriff had spoken truly!
Yet, at this time, but half of the ninety thousand4 who were to die in Marseilles of this pestilence had achieved their doom. Still, all was bad enough-awful, heart-rending! Not since ten thousand people died daily in Rome, in the first century of the Christian era, had so horrible a blight fallen upon any city. Nor had any city presented so terrible a sight as did Marseilles now when the women entered it, while glancing shudderingly to right and left as they passed along.
The dead lay unburied in the streets where they had fallen-men, women, and children being huddled together in heaps; it seemed even as if, after one heap had lain there for some hours, another had fallen on top of it, so that one might suppose that these second layers of dead represented those who, coming forth to search for their kindred and friends, had in their turn been stricken and fallen over them. There were also the bodies of many dogs lying stretched by the sides of the human victims, it being thought afterwards that they had taken the infection through sniffing at and caressing those who were dear to them. Yet-heart-rending as such a sight as this was to see, and doubly so as the women regarded it, partly under the rays of the moon and partly by aid of the flames of the fires which had been lit to destroy the contagion if possible-there was still worse to be witnessed.
This was the sight of those still left alive.
The women who had once formed the chain of female emigrants, and who, unfettered at last, marched along in company towards a spot where the Sheriff had said they would be able to sleep in peace for the remainder of the night, were now passing down a public promenade which ran for some three hundred yards through the principal part of the city. This promenade was known as Le Cours, and was bordered on each side by trees, mostly acacias and limes, which in summer threw a pleasant shade over the sitters and strollers during the day time, and, in the evening of the same season, had often served as a place for summer evening fetes to be held in, for open-air balmasqués, and as a rendezvous for lovers. Now the picture it presented was frightful!
In its midst there was a fountain with water gushing from the lips of fauns, nymphs, and satyrs into a basin beneath, and at that fountain the moon showed poor stricken men drinking copiously to cool their burning thirst, or leaning over the smooth sides of the basin and holding their extended tongues in the water. Or they lay gasping with their heads against the stone-work, in their endeavours to cool the heat of their throbbing brains, and to still, if might be, the splitting headaches which racked them. For clothes, many had nothing about them but a counterpane snatched hastily from off a bed ere they had rushed forth in agony unspeakable; often, too, when they had left their houses fully dressed, they had torn off their apparel in their inability to bear the warmth imparted by the garments. Yet numbers of them were not poor-if outward signs were sure testimony of wealth. One woman-young, perhaps beautiful, ere stricken by the disfiguring signs of the pest-was resplendent on breast and neck and hands with jewels that glittered in the moonbeams. Doubtless she had seized all she owned ere rushing from her house in misery!
If death levels all, so, too, had the pest in this desolated city plunged into strange companionship persons who, in other days, would never have been brought together. Hard by this bedizened woman was another, a woman of the people-perhaps a beggar, or a work girl, or a washer-woman at the best-who screamed and wailed over a dead babe lying in her lap. At her side was an old man, well clad and handsomely belaced, who shrieked forth offers of pistoles and louis' to any who would ease him of his pain, and then suddenly paused to call to him a dog hard by, to utter endearing words to it, and to endeavour to persuade it to draw near to him and quit the spot on which it lay writhing. A beggar, too! an awful thing of rags and patches! sat gibbering near them, and held out a can into which a monk passing by poured some soup, as he did into many others-yet, no sooner had the man put the stuff to his mouth than he hurled away the can, shrieking that the broth burned him to the vitals.
"This is the end," muttered Marion to herself, her dark eyes roving over all and seeing all as the women passed along-themselves now hideous in their vinegar-steeped wrappings-"the end of our journey!" Then she glanced down, frightened, at Laure, to see if she had heard her words. And she observed that this woman of gentler nature was walking by her side with her eyes closed, while supported and guided only by her own tender arm. The sight was too awful for Laure to gaze upon.
The alley led into a street called La Rue de la Bourse, a broad and stately one, full of large commodious houses such as the merchants of Marseilles had been accustomed to inhabit for some centuries. Now, it was deserted by all living things, while, at the same time, the dead lay in the streets as thick as autumn leaves. Huddled together they lay; some with their faces horribly distorted, some almost placid as though they had died in their sleep, some with their heads broken in! These were the people who had leapt from their windows in a frenzy of delirium or in an agony of pain; or, being dead, had been flung forth from those windows by the convicts and galley-slaves who had been sent into the houses to free them from the poisonous bodies of those who had expired.
Marion noticed, too, that the still living were driven off the thresholds of some houses to which they clung-one man, who looked like the master of the abode, was pouring cold water from a bucket down the steps, so that none would be likely to lie there. And, next, she heard a piteous dialogue between two others.
"It is my own house-my own house!" a man, writhing in a porch close to where she was, gasped to another who parleyed with him from a door open about half a foot. "Oh, my son! my son! let me die here on my own doorstep, if I may not enter."
Then the son answered, his tones being muffled by the aromatic bandages around his face:
"My father, it cannot be. Not because I am cruel to you, but because I must be kind to others still unstruck. Your wife and mine, also myself and my babes, are still free from the fever. Would you slay all, yet with no avail to yourself? My father, think of us," and he shut the door gently on the man while beseeching him once again to begone and to carry the contagion he bore about him far away from the house which contained all that should be dear to him.
"Brute!" cried Marion, hearing all this. "Brute! Animal!"
Then, because of her warm, impetuous Southern nature, she hurled more than one curse up at the window from which she saw the son's white face looking forth by now.
"Nay, nay," murmured the dying old man, while understanding. "Nay, curse him not, good woman. He speaks well. Why should I poison them? And-I am old, very old. I must have died soon in any hap. It matters not."
"There are houses here," whispered the convict, who still walked by Marion's and Laure's side, "at the end of the street, which are, by some marvel, unaffected. Yet, also, they are deserted, because they are so near to the poisoned ones. Seek shelter in one for the night, I counsel you."
"Show me one of such," said Marion. "If there is room enough for all of us," and she indicated with her eyes that she referred to the other women who had marched in company from Paris.
"Follow me, then. There is a house at the end, the mansion of one of our richest merchants. Yet he and all are gone; they have escaped safely in one of his ships to sea. He will not return for months; not until the city is free and purged. 'Twould hold a regiment," he added. Then he led the way down towards the house he spoke of.
"To-morrow," he continued, "the Sheriffs will ask me where you are disposed of, and I must say, since you will be required to lend aid. Meanwhile, sleep well, all you women. Above all, when you are in, shut fast every window so that no air enters the house to infect it. Forget not."