Down the Rue de la Bourse, wherein the women of la Châine had passed the latter part of the night, the rays of the sun began to stream horizontally as it rose far away over the Mediterranean and lit up the side of the street in which stood the house where the weary creatures lay.
A month before this period daybreak would have dawned upon a vastly different scene from the one of lifeless desolation to which it now brought light and warmth. The great warehouses at the back of the merchants' residences--in which position most of those buildings in Marseilles were situated--would have already begun to teem with human life; with bands of sailors coming up from the harbour, either bringing, or with the intention of carrying away, bales of goods and merchandise; workmen, mechanics, clerks, andemployésof every kind would have been passing up the street to their early work. Now, the Rue de la Bourse, like scores of other streets in the City, was absolutely deserted or only tenanted at various spots by the dead--human and animal!--who lay about where they had fallen--on doorsteps, in porches and stoops, sometimes even in the very middle of the road.
On such a scene as this Marion gazed as she looked forth from the room she and Laure had slept in; her mind full of sorrow and perplexity--not for herself nor on her own account, but on that of the other unhappy one over whom she watched. For herself she cared not--she knew that her past, and the consequences resulting from the actions of that past, had shut the door for ever against any sweetness of existence for her in the future, nor was she much concerned as to whether the pestilence slew her or not. Only--she had sworn to stand by Laure until the end; therefore she knew that now, at this present time and for some weeks or months at least, she must live, she must take care of her own health if she would do what she had vowed to perform. Afterwards, if she should see Laure spared by the hideous scourge which now ravaged the place they had arrived at, spared to be in some manner restored to the husband she had come at last to love--then it mattered little what became of her. But she must live to see that!
Marion went over to the girl now and once more gazed at her, observing that she was sleeping calmly and easily; then she returned to the window and continued her glances up and down the street. She was watching for those who, as the convict had said, would come for them soon after daybreak to lead them away to where their services would be needed as nurses and helpers, and she wished to be on the alert to prevent them from troubling Laure. She meant at once to tell them--her teeming brain never being at a loss for an expedient!--that the girl was ill or, at least, too weak to take any part in the proceedings for which they might all be required on that day, and to beg her off. She determined also that, whether the request was granted cheerfully or not, Laure should rest for the next twenty-four hours. Her confidence in her own powers and strength failed her no more now than they had ever failed her in the most violent crises of her life--she was resolved that what she desired should be accomplished.
Presently she saw them coming--or, rather, saw coming up the street a band of men and women who, she could not doubt, were a party of nurses and "crows," as the males were termed who attended to the work of removing the dead and, if possible, to the disposing of them elsewhere, namely, in the vaults of churches, the hollow walls of the ramparts, and, in some cases, in old boats and decayed vessels which were taken out to sea and there sunk. Whereon she went swiftly down the stairs to the door to meet them.
Among this body of persons which now drew near she saw her acquaintance of last night, the convict, who at once greeted her in his strong Breton accent, he being, as he had told her at their first meeting, a native of that province.
"Bon jour, Madame," he now cried with an attempt at cheerfulness,--poor wretch! he had made some sort of compact with himself that nothing should depress him, nor any horrors by which he was surrounded frighten him, while forcing himself to regard his impending liberty as a certainty which no pestilence must be allowed to deprive him of. "Bon jour, Madame. And how is the young one?"
"She is not well," Marion answered, while glad, in a way, that she so soon had an opportunity given her of declaring that Laure could not go nursing that day; "also, she must rest." Then she regarded the members of the group accompanying the man, while observing who and what they were.
Two were monks; good, holy men, who, working cheerfully under the orders of the bishop (as dozens of their brethren were doing in other parts of Marseilles) were now acting as doctors, since--horrible to relate--there was not one physician or surgeon now left either alive or unstricken. In the beginning of the pestilence, the doctors of Marseilles had scoffed at the disease being the plague; they had called it nothing but a trifling malady, and, unhappily both for them and all in the city, they had suffered for their obstinacy or, rather, incredulity. They had been amongst the very first to break down under the attacks of the loathsome fever which they had refused to recognise. Consequently, the work which they should still have been able to do had to be done by amateurs--such as these monks--or the surgeons of the galleys, or any stranger in the city who understood medicine and its uses, and was willing to risk his life in administering it.
Of the others who formed the group some were "crows," as has been said, while there were five women, three of them being under sentence for life at the travaux forcés, yet now with a fair prospect of freedom before them should they perform faithfully all that was demanded of them at this awful crisis, and--also--preserve their lives! Of the other two, one was an elderly lady whose whole existence had been devoted to good works, she even having voyaged as far as Siam with the missionaries sent out there; the second was a young and beautiful woman of high position among the merchant families of the place, who had broken her father's heart by her loose conduct and was now endeavouring to soothe her own remorse by self-sacrifice.
There was also a Sheriff--not the same as he who had accosted La Châine overnight--but another one, older than the former, and seeming also much grief-stricken.
"If," said this man, addressing Marion, "the young woman of whom you speak is indeed ill, let her rest; later, she may be able to be of assistance. God forbid we should do aught to add to the sickness here. She is not attacked with the pestilence?" he asked.
"Nay," said Marion. "Nay. But she is young and delicate. She is a lady. Think, monsieur, of what she must have gone through in the past few months. We others are mostly rough creatures, especially those who have survived, since the loose women, the dissolute ones who set out with us have--well--been left behind. But--but----"
"What was her crime? That of your friend? For what was she condemned?"
"She was an innocent woman!" cried Marion; and as she spoke her lustrous eyes blazed into the man's before her. "God crush for ever the scoundrel who bore false witness against her."
"There are other women in the house," the Sheriff said, almost unheeding Marion's tempestuous outburst. "They at least can work, can they not?"
"Oh! as for that," Marion answered, "I imagine so. I will go in and see. Yes," she exclaimed, glancing up at a window in the house above the room in which she and Laure had slept, she being now in the street and amidst the group, "it would seem so. Behold, they look forth."
It was true that they did so, since, when all eyes were directed upwards, the unkempt heads of the other surviving members of the gang--heads covered in some cases with black hair, in some with yellow, and, in one, with grey--were seen peering down into the street.
"Hola!" cried Marion, "come down all of you. Come down and assist at the good work. You have slept well, have you not?"
"Ay, we have slept. But now we are hungry. We want food. We cannot work on empty stomachs; if we do the pest will seize on us."
"Descend," cried the Sheriff, "we bring food with us. For to-day," he muttered to himself, turning aside his head. "To-morrow there may be none. Already the country people will not enter the city nor take what they deem to be our poisoned money. God help all!"
As he so muttered to himself he made a sign to one of the men who carried a great copper pot, and to one of the condemned women who bore in her hands a tin box, and bade them prepare some food, the man lighting at his bidding a little brazier at the bottom of the big pot. At the same time the female produced from her box some hard ship's biscuits, and began, with a stone she picked up, to break them into pieces.
By this time the other women had come down into the street, and, inhaling the odour of the soup which was warming in the utensil, betrayed intense desire to be at once supplied with some nourishment.
"A half cup to each," said the Sheriff, "and some biscuits. Later, you shall have more. A warehouse is to be broken open at midday; it is that of a merchant who supplies vessels with necessaries for long voyages. God grant that we shall find enough for many days. Otherwise, starvation will soon be added to our other miseries. Already seventy such warehouses have been ransacked."
Obtaining a portion of soup and another of biscuit, Marion went back to the house to Laure, though not before she had filled up the other cup with her own share of soup, reserving only a scrap of the food for herself; and, when there, she found the girl sitting up upon the couch listening to the voices of those in the street.
"Have they come for us?" Laure asked wearily. "Must we now begin to work? Well, so be it! I am ready."
"Nay, dearest," exclaimed the other. "You need not go forth to-day. I have begged you off, because you are so worn and delicate. And see, sweet, they are serving out food. Here is some good broth and biscuit. Take it; it will nourish you."
"But it is not right," Laure exclaimed, "that I should stay behind. They--you, too, Marion, my guide and comforter--are all as weary as I. I will go also."
"No; no. Rest here till we come back. Then, to-morrow, if you are stronger, you shall assist. Nay, you must do so if you can; thereby the better to entitle you to your freedom. Oh! Laure, we must work for that freedom. Then--at last--we can go away and live together, and I can earn subsistence for both. Until we find your husband."
"You are in truth an angel, Marion," the girl exclaimed, flinging her arms around the other's dark swarthy neck. "Oh! how--how could one as good as you have ever come within the law's clutches. How----"
"Hush! Hush! I have been an awful sinner; I have deserved my fate, I have been swayed and mastered by one passion after another--by love, jealousy, hate, revenge. God forgive me! We southern women are all like that! Yet--if I should live----"
"If you live! You shall, you must live! Oh! Marion, my guide, my sister----"
"Ah, your sister! Yes! Say that again. Yet," she cried, springing to her feet, "not now! Now we have to earn the freedom we long so for. I must go; I must do my best and work for both of us. Ah, God! how good it is, how peaceful, to be doing something at last, no matter if danger lurks in it, that is not evil. Let me go, sweet. I shall come back to you at night; therefore sleep well all day. And, see, I will lock you in the house so that no harm may come anigh you. You will not fear?"
"Never; knowing you are coming back to me."
Then they tore themselves apart, Marion taking every opportunity of leaving Laure as comfortable as was possible, which opportunity was not lacking since the room was, as has been said, furnished luxuriously, and nothing was wanting that might make the couch of the wearied girl an easy one. And so, after more embraces between them, Marion went forth once more, falling in with the rest of the women and following the Sheriff and the convict and the "crows," to do the work they might be appointed to perform.
The bravest heart that ever beat--even her own, since there was none braver!--might well be turned almost to stone by that which they had to do; the sights they were forced to witness. And the daylight made those sights even more terrible and more appalling than the night had done, which, if it produced a weird and wizard air of solemnity that spread itself around all the terrors of the pestilence, had; at least, served also as a cloak to much. For now they saw the dead lying in heaps upon each other--with, among them, the dying; they saw the awful chalk-like faces turned up to the bright morning sun in the last agonised glare of a hideous death, and the still whiter eye-balls gleaming hideously. They saw, too--but description of these horrors must cease. Suffice it that these women stood among a hecatomb of victims such as other stricken cities had shown in earlier days, but which none, not even London with its plague, had equalled for more than a hundred years.
Gradually the women of the gang were distributed about in various spots where it was thought they might be of service; to some fell the task of holding cups of broth or of water to the lips of the dying; to some the casting of disinfectants over the already dead; to others the removal of newborn babes from the pestiferous atmosphere in which their mothers lay. And Marion's task, because she was strong and feared nothing, was to assist in the removal of the dead to the carts that were to transport the bodies to the ramparts, in the hollows of which many scores were to be interred in quicklime.
Engaged thus, she observed near her a gentleman--a man clad in black, as one who wore mourning for a relative; a man young, handsome and grave. One, too, whose face was white and careworn as though it had become so through some poignant grief. He was talking to one of the "crows" as her eyes fell on him, and--with an astonishment in her mind which, she noticed, was not all an astonishment, but rather an indistinct feeling that gradually merged itself into something that she seemed to feel, did not partake altogether of the unexpected--she observed that both men were regarding her. They were doing so, she understood, by the glances cast at her by the "crow," and followed by others from the stranger talking of her. Why, she asked herself, why? Yet even as she did so, something within again apprised her, whispered to her, that it was not strange they should be doing so. Then, with the habit of years strong upon her, she cast one penetrating glance at the new-comer from out of her dark eyes, and went on with the loathsome work she was engaged upon.
Presently, however, she felt that the man clad in mourning had drawn near to her--she knew it though she had looked round no more: a moment later she heard him addressing her.
"You will pardon me," he whispered, "for what I have to say. But--but--that unhappy creature with whom I have been conversing has told me that--you--alas! that I must say it--have recently made a journey from Paris. That you are----"
"A convicted woman," Marion replied swiftly, facing round on him, her eyes ablaze; "a criminal! One of the women condemned to deportation to the colonies. Well, he has spoken the truth. What then?"
"Forgive me. I speak not with a view to wound you, or to be offensive. But, God help me, I seek one dear to me. An innocent woman condemned to the same penance as you, and by one who is a double damned scoundrel. She was of your chain. And--heaven pity us both, I love her--she is my--wife."
"Your wife!" Marion repeated, standing before him, gazing full into his eyes, holding still in her hand the white leprous-looking hand of a dead woman whose body she had been helping to place in the cart. "Your wife." And now her voice had sunk to as deep a murmur as it had ever assumed, even in the softest moments of her bygone days of love and passion. "Your wife. Amongst us?"
"It is so. Oh, speak; answer me. Is--is--yet almost I fear to ask. Still--still I must do it. Is she still alive?"
"What?"--mastering herself, speaking firmly, though hoarsely--"What is your name?"
"Walter Clarges. I am an Englishman."
"Laure's husband! Laure's husband!"
"You know her! You know--ah! does she live?"
"Yes. She lives."
"God! I thank thee!" the other murmured.
Marion Lascelles had hoped, had prayed that this moment would come at last; that at some future day Laure's husband would stand face to face with his wife again; that he would seek her out and find her even though, to do so, he had to follow La Châine to the New World.
But now--now that what she had hoped for had come to pass, there almost swept a revulsion of feeling over her. Standing before that husband of the woman whom she had tended and nurtured, she smothered within her bosom something that was akin to a groan. For his coming brought, would bring, in an hour, in half-an-hour, in a few moments, the joy unspeakable to Laure for which she had so much craved, while to her--to Marion--the outcast, it brought also separation from the only thing in all the wide world that she loved or could ever love again. She had been racked by her love for men who had treated her badly and on whom she had taken swift, unerring vengeance for their infidelity; yet that was passed. Her heart had died, or, if not dead, had steeled itself against all other love of a like nature (since the condemned man whom she had married in the prison had been only accepted as a husband because, in the distant land to which they had been going together, such a union would be a matter of convenience and profit, as well as, perhaps, safety). Yet into that heart had crept another love, pure, unselfish, almost holy. Her love for Laure. And now--now it would be worthless, valueless, of no esteem. At what price would her fostering, her sister's love be valued when set off against the love of husband?
Had she been a bad woman instead of an erring one only, a woman resolved to attach to her for ever the one creature with whose existence her own was, as she had vainly dreamed, inseparably bound up; had she been the Marion Lascelles of ten, five, perhaps one year ago, it may be--she feared it must have been--that she would have lied to Walter Clarges standing there before her, his sad face irradiated now, since she had not lied, with joy extreme. She would perhaps have denied Laure's existence, have said that she had long since fallen dead upon one of the roads along which she and the other women had plodded weary and footsore; she would have done anything to have kept the girl to herself. But not now. Not now. Not even though her heart broke within her. Never! She loved Laure. Perish, therefore, all her own feelings, her hopes of happy days to come and to be passed by the other's side. She loved her; it was not by falsehood and treachery and selfishness that that love must be testified.
"I cannot leave this work to which I am put," she said, speaking to him as these thoughts continued to flow through her mind. "I have to earn remission of the remainder of my sentence. Pardon for--for myself. Yet, if you would see her now, she is to be found in the Rue de la Bourse. The number is 3. Upon the first floor in the front room you will find her."
She spoke calmly, almost hardly, Walter Clarges thought, and, thus thinking, deemed her a cold-hearted, selfish woman, studying nought but her own release and the swiftest method of obtaining it. Wherefore he said:
"You know her. You must have marched in the same cordon with her."
"Yes, I know her."
"How can she have borne the terrors of the journey? How? How?"
"All had to bear it," Marion Lascelles answered, glancing up at him, "or die."
"This house?" he asked, while almost shuddering at the cold, indifferent tones in which the woman spoke, even while reflecting that, since she had borne as much as Laure had done, it was not to be expected that she should show any particular sympathy for a companion in misfortune. "This house? Can admission be obtained to it? And why is she there, when--when her companions in misery and unhappiness are here?"
"This key," Marion said, drawing it from her pocket, "will admit you. She is alone, sleeping. She is not as strong as some of us--us, the outcasts, who are the rightful prey of the galleys and the scaffold. Mercy has been shown her. She has been relieved from her work in these streets to-day."
He took the key from her as she held it out to him, glancing at her wonderingly as he did so, though understanding nothing of the cause which produced her bitterness of tone--her self-contempt, as testified by her speech. Then, thanking her, he repeated:
"No. 3, of the Rue de la Bourse. That is it?"
"That is it. You will find her there." After which she turned away and slowly followed after the cart proceeding up the street with its terrible burdens.
If Marion Lascelles had never before wrestled with all the strong emotions which were born of her fiery nature day by day, and month by month, she had done so this morning, was doing so now. And at last--at last--she thanked God the better had overcome the worse--she had conquered. None knew but herself, none should ever know, what hopes she had formed in her bosom of happy days to come when she and the delicate girl, whom she had supported all through the hideous journey from Paris, and during their still more hideous entry into this stricken city of death, should have escaped away to some spot where they might at last be at peace. She had pictured to herself how she would work and slave for Laure so that she should be at ease; how work her fingers to the bone, bear any toil, so that--only that--she might have the sweet companionship of the girl as recompense. And now--now--the dream had vanished, the hope was past; they could never be aught to each other. The husband was there, he had come to claim his wife, as she herself had told Laure he would come; now he would be all in all to her and she would be nothing. Yet she must not repine; the prayers that she had forced herself to utter, almost without knowing how to frame them, had been heard and answered. The God against whom her life had been so long an outrage had granted her the first request she had ever made to Him. Was it for her now to rebel against the granting of it? Nay, nay, she answered to herself, never. And, even in her misery and her awful sense of desolation, in her appreciation of the solitude that must be hers for ever now, she found a consolation. She had done that which she should do; she had sent the husband straight to his wife's arms when she might so easily have prevented him from even discovering that wife's existence. One lie, one false hint, one word uttered to the effect that Laure had succumbed upon the road and had been left behind for the communes to bury her, and it would have been enough. She would have remained to Marion; the husband could never have found her--he could never find her. No, no! God be praised! she had been true and faithful; she had not yielded to her own selfish hopes and desires.
"Take," said a soft and gentle voice in her ear at this moment; the voice of the unhappy Sheriff who accompanied the carts that were removing the dead, "take, good woman, more heed of yourself and your own life. See, the cloth with the disinfectants has fallen from your neck--it is lost. Beware of what you do. Otherwise you will be stricken ere long yourself."
Turning, she glanced up at the speaker, then shrugged her shoulders and went on with the loathsome task she was engaged upon--that of bending over prostrate bodies to see if their owners were, indeed, dead or not, and, if the latter, of assisting in their removal to the carts. But that was all, she uttered no word in answer to the warning.
"You do not value your life?" the man continued, while thinking how fine a woman this was; one so darkly handsome too, that, surely, she must have some who loved her, criminal though she must undoubtedly be since she had formed one of the chain-gang.
"No," she answered, looking up at him now. "I do not value it. Yet, they say, 'tis to such as I am that death never comes."
"But, ere long, if you survive this visitation, you may--you shall--be free. I will charge myself with your freedom."
"Free!" she answered, her eyes fixed on him with so sad a look that, instinctively, he turned away. There was something in this woman's life, he understood, which it was not for him to attempt to probe.
Left in peace by the Sheriff, Marion continued her work, following close by the cart; yet bidding the man who led the horse to halt at intervals wherever she found some poor body with distorted features which told only too plainly that the last agony had been experienced; halting herself sometimes to be of assistance to those who were still alive. But always saying over and over again the words, "Free! Free!"
Free! Of what use was freedom now to her? What! Supposing she were free to-night, to-morrow, what should she do with that freedom? Laure wanted her no more, she would not miss her if she never went back to the Rue de la Bourse; she had her husband now, the man whom, she acknowledged, she had learned to love. Therefore, Marion resolved that she would never go back. Never! Of that she was determined. She would but be an incubus, be only in the way of their love. She would never go back. Not even if the pestilence spared her, which, she hoped, it might not do.
They had come by now to the street of the Barefooted Carmelites--a street in which she perceived that there were no dead--or, only one, a woman lying on one side of it. And here, strong as she was, she felt that she must rest. Her limbs trembled beneath her--from fatigue and want of sufficient nourishment, she thought, not daring to hope that already the fever had stolen into her veins and that a better, surer freedom than the one the Sheriff had suggested might be near at hand. He, that Sheriff, had left them by now to attend to other duties in the city, therefore there was at this time no living person with her but the carman, who, with his ghastly burdens in his cart, walked ahead of her.
"I must rest here," she said to him, "a little while. See, there is a fountain in the street. We will drink," and she went towards the fountain, which was represented by a statue of Cybele, from out of whose bunch of keys the water gushed in half a dozen streams.
"Drink not," the carman exclaimed, warningly. "They say the source is impregnated. All the water of Marseilles is poisonous now. Beware!"
"Bah! It must come from the bowels of the earth. There are no infected bodies there. And," she muttered to herself, "even though there were I still would drink." Whereon she drank, then sat down on the base of the statue, which was large and spacious and would have furnished a dozen persons with seats.
Presently, still sitting there--she saw come down the street a number of men, some of them galley slaves, two of them officers. Then, when all had advanced almost to where Marion sat observing them, one of the latter drew from his pocket a list and began to read out several names, while giving the convicts instructions as to what each had to do. But what truly surprised Marion was that, behind all these men there came some others leading the horses which drew two carts--carts not filled with dead, but the one with mortar and the other with bricks.
Gazing at these, and almost with interest for one whose mind was as troubled as hers, she perceived that, of the galley slaves, one had drawn away from the group, and, approaching the base of the fountain, had sat down upon it near her and on the other side from that on which the carman whom she had accompanied was sitting. An old criminal this; a man of nearly sixty, grey and grizzled, and with a frosty bristling on his unshaven chin and cheeks and upper lip. A man who sat with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, staring in front of him--at a house numbered 77.
"What do they do?" Marion asked of this staring man, while looking round at him and noticing how worn and white he was, "and why are these carts piled with bricks and mortar? What is it?"
"They brick up the houses that are infected; those in which the dead lie. Those that are the worst."
"But--but--supposing there should be any living left in them. See, they have commenced there, at 76, and without entering to make inspection. That would be even more terrible than all else."
"The inspection has been made. The houses are marked already. Observe, there is a chalk mark. Regard No. 76, at which the masons work."
"By whom has the inspection been made?"
"By me and another," the convict answered, turning his white and ghastly face on her. "Three hours ago, this morning. At daybreak."
"All are not marked."
"No, all are not marked. Not--yet!" Ere she could, however, ask more, one of the officers strode towards where they sat near together, and, addressing the convict, who sprang respectfully to his feet, said:
"Have you thought, remembered yet, which is the house you had forgotten. Idiot that you are! to have thus forgotten. Reflect again. Recall the house. Otherwise we shall brick up one in which there are no dead to be left to decay in it."
"I think--I think," the other answered--white and almost shivering, as Marion, who was watching him curiously, observed, "it is that," and he pointed to No. 77.
"You think! Yet are not positive? Go in again and see. Make sure this time. Go."
Slowly the man obeyed him, walking over to the door of No. 77, and then, after turning the handle, entering. And, while he was gone, the masons went on with the bricking up of one or other of the houses which bore the chalk-marked cross beneath their numbers.
Five minutes later the convict appeared again at the door and said, loud enough for his voice to reach the officer's ears and also to reach Marion's:
"This, Monsieur, is the house," while, as he spoke, his left hand went to the pocket of his filthy galley's dress.
"You are sure?"
"I am--sure!"
"Mark it."
Therefore, in obedience to the order, the man drew forth a piece of chalk from his pocket, and slowly marked the cross beneath the number 77. "Now," said the officer, seeing that the masons were ready to begin upon that house, "fall in and lend assistance." Half-an-hour later it was done, finished. Not for a year would that house be opened again. By which time those who were in it--if any--would be skeletons.
Oh! let me be awake,Or let me sleep alway.
Oh! let me be awake,Or let me sleep alway.
Left alone by Marion's departure, Laure endeavoured to sleep once more and to obtain some return of the strength that she had lost in that long, horrible march which she, in common with all the other women, had been forced to make from Paris.
"If I could only sleep again," she murmured to herself, "sleep and forget everything. Everything!"
Yet, because, perhaps, the early morning sun streamed so brightly through the handsome curtains of the windows in spite of their having been drawn carefully together by Marion ere she went forth, or because the sparrows twittered so continuously from the eaves--the pestilence brought neither death nor misery to them!--she could sleep no more. Instead, she could only toss and turn upon the luxurious couch on which she had lain all night, wondering, as she did so, if the unhappy owner and his family who had fled affrighted from all their wealth and sumptuous surroundings had now as soft a one whereon to rest--wondering, too, what was to be the end of it all.
"As for him," she murmured, for her thoughts dwelt always, hour by hour and day after day, upon the man who had sacrificed his existence--his life for her, perhaps--if Desparre had spoken truly; "as for him--oh, God!" she broke off, "if I could only see him once again. Only once! To tell him how soon I had surrendered, how he had conquered, even as he stood before me sad and unhappy on his own hearth. To see him only once!"
Again she turned upon her pillows and cushions, again attempted to sleep; but it was in vain. She was neither nervous nor alarmed at being alone in the great, desolate house; since what had she, this worn, emaciated outcast to fear!--therefore she thought that it must be owing to her heavy slumber of the past night that she was now wide awake. Or owing, perhaps, to her thoughts of him.
"If he were not slain," she pondered now while lying there, her eyes open and staring at the richly painted and moulded ceiling of the vast saloon, "he may be by this time in that land to which he was going. And he will think, must think, that I fled from him the moment he had left his house. Even though I should go on in the transports to the same place wherein he is, and we might meet, he would cast me off, discard me as one who is worthless."
Why had she not spoken on that night, she mused? Why? Why? Had she said but one word, had she but held out some promise that, in time, her love would grow, he would have stayed by her side, would never have left the house. And, thus, there would have been no danger of his being slain, if slain he was; nor could that crawling snake, Desparre, have made his way to the house to which Walter had taken her, nor, having done so, would he have been able to effect any harm.
"Slain! Slain!" she continued, musing, "slain! Yet some voice whispers in my ears that it was not so, that Marion is right. That he is alive. Still, even so, what can that profit me; how help me to put aside my misery and despair? Alive! he would deem himself lawfully free of me by my desertion, free to become another woman's lover--or husband--free to whisper the words in her ears that he whispered once in mine, to see his and her children grow up at his knee."
Excitedly she sprang from the couch and paced the floor, her thoughts beyond endurance.
"No! no no!" she gasped again and again. A dozen times she cried out, "No," in her despair. "Not that, not that! I loved you, Walter," she murmured, "I loved you. If never before, then, at least, on the morning when you risked everything in the world to obtain my freedom from that fiend incarnate, when you led me through the garden, stood at the altar by my side, made me your wife. Then, then, I loved you, worshipped you. I cannot bear these thoughts, I cannot bear to deem you another's. Oh, Walter! Walter!"
Soon, however, she became more calm; she recalled what she was now. An outcast, a woman condemned to deportation; in truth, a convict, and none the less so because, through one strange and awful circumstance, it was almost certain that the exile to which she had been doomed would never now be borne by her or her companion.
She became sufficiently calm now to speculate, while she paced the floor of the vast room, as to what her and Marion's future would be if spent together as both hoped; as to what poverty and struggles both would have to contend with. Of how, too, they would grow older and older together, until at last the parting came--that awful moment when, of two who love each other dearly, one has to go while leaving the other behind, stricken and prostrate.
But, suddenly, these meditations were broken in upon; to them succeeded a more bodily fear, a terror of some tangible danger near at hand.
She had heard a grating sound in the passage beneath, a sound that she recognised at once in the hollow emptiness of the house to be that of a large key turning in a lock; she heard next the hall door pushed opened and a man's step below. What was it? Who could be coming? Perhaps thegalérienof the night before who had escorted them to this place, the man whose familiarities had been sternly repressed by Marion. If so, what could he want? How could he have become possessed of the key which Marion had at the last moment said should never quit her possession until she returned in the evening? Yet, as she heard the man's footfall below, while recognising as she did so that he was entering each of the rooms on the lower floor one after the other, she was able to calm her trepidation by reflecting that, whatever purpose he might be there for, it could scarcely bode harm to her. What had she--a beggar, clad in the rags of the galleys, with no remnants of beauty, scarcely any of womanhood, left in her sunbaked, emaciated face--to fear? What had she to tempt any man with, even if he were the most ferocious and hardened of his sex. Then she heard the steps of the intruder coming up the stairs. To this floor on which she was! Well, she feared nothing; she would go forth and encounter him, whosoever he might be, instead of locking herself in the saloon as a moment ago she had thought of doing.
He might be bringing some message from Marion, some news she ought to know. But, suddenly, her heart almost stopped beating. What if her one friend in all the wide world, her one support and comfort, should be stricken already! She must go forth on to the landing and learn what the entry of this man into the house might portend. Reaching the head of the stairs, looking down at him who was ascending, she knew that, at least, this was no knavish galley-slave who mounted slowly towards where she was; no thief, nor, did it seem likely, anyone who had been sent with a message to her from Marion. More like, she thought, it was the owner of this great, luxurious house. She could not see the man's face as he ascended, since it was hidden by his three-cornered hat, yet she observed that the rich mourning he wore--doubtless for some of his family who had fallen victims to the pest--was, although smirched and travel-stained, of the best. The black satin coat, the lace of his cravat and ruffles, the costly sword, were those of one such as the master of this house might be.
Then the man looked up, and their eyes met.
And, even as they did so, even as she clasped her breast with both her hands, drawing back with a gasp, she knew, she understood, that her husband had not recognised her! If, in her aching heart, there had ever arisen any doubt of the ravages which her sufferings and tribulation had caused to her beauty, that doubt was dispelled now; it existed no longer. She was so changed that her own husband did not know her!
But still he came on, step by step, up those stairs. On and up until they stood face to face.
Then he knew her!
And, with a loud cry, he strode forward. A moment later his arms were around her, her head was upon his breast.
"My wife! My wife!" he cried, "ah, my wife! Thank God, I have found you."
* * * * * *
Whatever havoc those sufferings and tribulations might have wrought upon Laure no sign was given by her husband that he perceived them. Instead, as hour after hour went by and still she lay in his arms sobbing in her happiness, she learnt that to him she was as beautiful as in the first hour he had cast his eyes upon her; that, always, even though never more the fair rose and white should return to her complexion, nor the mark left by the hateful carcan become effaced, she would be to him the one woman in all the world. That he had observed that devilish mark, and understood the story it told, she perceived at once, as again and again he kissed the ring upon her neck which the iron had stamped in, while murmuring words of love and deep affection as he did so. But he heeded it no more than he did the sunburn upon her face and throat and breast, the hollowness of her eyes or the emaciation of her frame. All, all of her beauty would come back amidst the pine-scented breezes and mountain air of the land to which he would bear her, while she was surrounded, as she should be, by everything that wealth and happiness could offer.
Wherefore she could only murmur again and again:
"What I feared most of all was that you deemed me heartless and intriguing, that I had used you only as a means to my own end. Walter, my love, my husband, I feared that I was banished from your heart. I feared it even as I recognised that I had loved you from the first."
"That will be," he whispered back, "only when my heart has ceased to beat."
So the day drew on and the sun had left the front of the house; over the street, up which none came, and in which no footfall was heard--over which, indeed, there reigned a silence as of death--the shadows of the evening began to creep, ere they had told each other all. Laure had narrated Desparre's visit to the Rue de la Dauphine, far away in northern Paris, as well as everything that had befallen her since she was cast into prison as a would-be murderess. Walter, too, had told the tale of his misery when he returned to his apartments, his discovery of what had been her fate, his instant departure for this stricken city, and the encounter with Desparre.
"He here!" she had exclaimed, almost affrighted at the thought, in spite of her husband's statement that, even though Desparre should not be struck for death, he still was harmless for further injury, "what could have brought him here? What!"
That Walter could not answer this question is certain; but that he could divine how, in some way, Desparre must have learnt who and what the woman was whom he had condemned to such fiendish punishment, he felt assured. But he had vowed to himself that this fact should never be made known to Laure; she must never learn that it was from her own father's hand that the blow had fallen which consigned her to the horrors of the past months. There was only one man who, if he were still alive, could tell her now--since he was resolved that Desparre should never again stand in her presence, nor be face to face with her--only one, Vandecque. But it was not likely that Laure and he would ever meet again. Had not the beggar, the miserable, shrinking wretch whom he had saved from a beating in Paris, and who had informed him of all, told him, too, that Desparre had made sure of Vandecque and had silenced him for ever? No more was it likely that she and that scoundrel would meet again than that she and Desparre would do so.
In the now swift-coming twilight of the summer evening they heard the voices of women in the street below, and he, looking out inquiringly, learned that they proceeded from her fellow-sufferers who were returning to this house for the night. It was the time at which Marion had told her that, according to what the man who had brought them to this house had said, they would be released from their duties in the streets.
Of Marion herself they had long since spoken when Walter came to that part of his narrative wherein he narrated how he had found Laure out, and had been able to reach her through this woman's assistance; while his wife had described the other as one who had been her saviour and guardian, one to whom she owed the fact that she was still alive.
And again they spoke of her, wondering how soon it would be ere she returned.
"She is an angel of goodness," Laure said, "turbulent as her life has been. Oh, Walter, Walter, I can never part from her. She must stay with me always."
"Always," he answered; "always. If her life can be made happy, I will make it so out of my deep gratitude for all that she has done for you. If she will come with us her happiness shall be for ever assured."
"You will tell her so when she comes back to me? Now, at once, when next she enters this room? You will not let her think, Walter--not for one moment--that--that my new-found happiness shall bring misery in its train for her?"
"At once I will tell her."
As he spoke, the women were coming up the stairs, heavily, dully, gripping the balustrades as they did so; thanking God that, as yet, not one of them seemed to be affected by the horrible contagion they had been amongst. Thanking God, also, that there was another long night of rest before them in which they could sleep soundly.
"Where?" asked Laure, leaving her husband alone in the vast saloon, and going out on the landing as she heard the footsteps of the last woman receding as she mounted to the floor on which the others had slept the night before, "where is Marion? Has she not returned with you all?"
"Nay, I know not," said one, who had also received much help from the strong Southern woman whom they had come to regard as their leader. "I know not. We have all been together, excepting her alone. Is she not back?"
But as she asked the question and before Laure could answer it, another woman who had mounted higher than the other looked over the balustrade rail, and calling down, said:
"She is attending a convict who has been struck; who is, a monk said, doomed. He fell in the Flower Market, writhing. One who was engaged in walling up the doors of the infected houses. I saw her half-an-hour ago."
Then descending a few steps of the stairs, so that now she stood but little above where Laure was, she continued:
"The man wanders in his mind. He told Marion that your husband had come here to seek for you in Marseilles; that he knew him; that he had seen and recognised him."
"My husband has come here!--it is true--and has found me God be praised," while, as she spoke, there was a look of such supreme happiness in her eyes, on her whole face, that the other women could not withdraw their gaze from her. "He has found me. Yet, how can this stricken man, this galley slave, know him?"
"He says he does; and avers that it is so. He says, too, he must see him ere he dies."
Then, because the woman was one who was more righteously sentenced to deportation than most who had toiled in her company from Paris to Marseilles, she having been a thief and a receiver of stolen goods for many years in the Capital, she lowered her voice as she said:
"If he is here, best bid him go see the dying man. He may know of hidden goods, of appropriated treasure securely put away, of wealth easily to be acquired. Tell your husband, if he is in truth his friend, if he has any such a friend----"
"My husband the friend of such as that!" Laure exclaimed. "God forbid! He is an honest man! A gentleman!"
"All our husbands are!" the woman exclaimed with a grimace. "We can all say that! Yet they cannot preserve us from such a fate as this!" and she turned and recommenced the ascent of the stairs.
Relating this to Walter when she returned to the saloon, Laure perceived that the information the woman had given her was surprising to him.
"A dying convict!" he exclaimed, "who knows and recognises me! Impossible. I know none. Yet," he continued, "it may be some man whom I have met in the past. My own countrymen have found their way to the galleys ere now. I will go."
"For God's sake beware of what you do," Laure whispered. "Put yourself in no danger of this infection. Oh! Walter, if--if I lost you now that you have come back to me, my heart would break."