MARSEILLES
The chain gangs--the men a mile ahead of the women--marched but slowly
on their way; indeed, it was impossible that they should progress very
fast. Some, as has been said, especially among the female prisoners,
had never been accustomed to walking at all; others, amongst both
women and men, soon became footsore. The months passed in the dungeons
of the prisons, with their bodies chained by the neck to the beam
behind them, had given their feet but little opportunity of exercise,
that only being obtainable which they got from stamping on the ground
to drive out the cold they suffered from during the winter period. No
wonder that all became footsore ere a fiftieth part of their toilsome
journey was covered.
Yet they went on; they had to go on. Marseilles was, to be exact, 356
miles from Paris by road, and they were timed to do the distance in
thirty days; must do it according to the contract made by the
Government with the owners of the ships which were to transport the
"colonists," the "emigrants," to New France. Thirty days for 356
miles.
About twelve miles a day! Not much that for pedestrians, for hardy
walkers, for people used to journeying on foot day by day. A thing to
be accomplished easily, and easily to be surpassed, by the countless
pedlars who swarmed over the face of France; by itinerant monks, by
wandering ballad-singers, strolling players and troops of showmen; yet
not easy for women or men who, even if they had ever walked at all,
were now quite out of practice; who, also, were ill-fed and, in many
cases, were sick and ailing. Yet they had to do it. It must be done.
Each morning, therefore, they set forth again on their route, no
matter whether the sun was beating down fiercely on their heads--they
being protected only by hats which they had been allowed to plait from
the prison straw, in anticipation of the forthcoming journey--or
whether the rain was falling in torrents. Each night they lay down
wherever the chain halted, which it generally did near some village or
hamlet, partly because there the colonists might be allowed to lie and
sleep beneath the shelter of barns and outhouses, but more
particularly because, thereby, the guards and the galley sergeants and
mounted gendarmes could find drinking shops and _pants_ wherein they
might rest and refresh themselves. And, gradually, as they went on and
on along the great southern road, through Montargis and Cosne, and by
Nevers, and on to Moulins and Montmarault, their numbers became a
little diminished nightly. Women dropped by the wayside, or, rather,
amidst the dust and mud of the high road; it was useless to place them
in the carts and carry them further; therefore they were left beneath
the hedges and the sparse bushes that bordered the route--left with
their coarse prison petticoat thrown over their dead faces to save
them from the flies--left there for the villagers to bury when they
were found. And, because the women passed along behind the men, they
saw--they could not help but see!--unless they were blinded by
staggering for league after league through heat and dust, that, with
the chain of men, the same thing had happened. Their bodies--some of
their bodies--were also to be seen lying beneath the hedges and the
bushes, but with no protecting rag over their faces.
Yet, still, those who were not dead went on and on, stumbling,
falling, being dragged up by the companion manacled to them, or by the
guards (kind in some cases, brutal in others) on and on, like women
walking in their sleep; their lids half closed over their glistening,
fever-lit eyes, their senses telling them they were suffering, even as
the dumb brutes' senses tell them that they are suffering. But no
more!
Shackled to the dark handsome woman of the south who had espoused the
writer who hated Rome and her customs, was Laure, alive still, though
praying that every day might be her last. That she would have ever
reached Clermont, to which they were by now arrived, had it not been
for this woman, was doubtful. For she, brought up by Vandecque in all
the luxury he could afford--partly from love of her, partly because
she was a saleable article that, carefully cherished, might fetch a
large price--was no more fitted to walk day by day a distance of from
ten to fifteen miles than she was fitted to sleep on the ground in
barns and outhouses, or to exist on bread and water and anything else
which her comrade could procure by stealing or begging from the
compassionate landlords of those inns where sometimes the chain
halted.
Yet she had done it, she had survived, she was alive; she could feel
the cool mountain air of the Dômes sweep down upon and revive her. She
was still alive.
It seemed to her as if a miracle alone could have kept her so; a
miracle that had for its instrument the woman Marion Lascelles
(Lascelles being the name of the man the latter had espoused, but from
whom she would be separated until they stood free in Louisiana). For
Marion, however vile her past had been, or whatever crimes she might
have steeped her hands in, was, at least, an angel of mercy to Laure,
though at first she had not been so. Instead, indeed, she, in her
great, masterful strength, which neither dungeon nor starvation had
been able to subdue, had strode fiercely along the baked roads which
led, as she muttered to herself, to the sea-coast first, and then to
freedom, though a freedom thousands of miles away. And, as she so
strode, she dragged at the chain which fastened Laure to her, until
once, in doing so, she brought down on her the eye of the officer, or
guard, who rode near.
"What ails her?" he asked, guiding his horse up close to them, while
Marion saw his hand tighten on the whip he held as though about to
administer a blow. "What ails her? Does she want a taste of this?" and
he shook it before their eyes. The fellows in charge of the chain
gangs were indeed officers, but, since none but the most brutal, or
those who had risen from the lowest ranks, would condescend to accept
this employment, to which they were regularly appointed for periods,
their savageness was not extraordinary.
"Nay," replied Marion; "it is my fault. I am too rough with her. And
you can see that she is a gentlewoman, delicately bred. If," and her
black eyes flashed at him, "you are a man, strike not one as helpless
as she is."
"Oh! as for that," the fellow answered, "there are no delicately-bred
ones here. Sentenced convicts all, while you are in our hands. Yet,
since you are the best-looking women in the gang--I love both fair and
dark myself!--I will not beat her this time. But there must be no
lagging; the transports sail under three weeks from now if the wind is
fair. We must be there--at Marseilles."
"She shall not lag," Marion replied. "If she fails I will carry her."
"God bless you," Laure said to her that night, as, still chained to
each other, they lay down together in a shelter for sheep outside
Issoire, since the dreary march was now almost half compassed though
many leagues had still to be accomplished. "God bless you, you are a
true woman." Then she put out her hand and touched the dark one of the
woman at her side, and called her "sister."
With this began their friendship; with it began, too, a revolution in
the hot, fiery blood that coursed through the veins of Marion
Lascelles. She scarcely knew at first what crime the woman next to her
had been condemned for, though she had caught something of what the
chaplain of the prison had said to the fellow who desired to marry
Laure; but one thing she did know, namely that, besides herself, this
was an innocent, suffering creature. And this weakling had called her
"sister"; had prayed God to bless her--to bless her! "When," she
mused, "when, if ever, had such a prayer gone up to heaven for her;
when, when?" Not, she thought, since she was a simple, innocent child,
roaming about the sandy, sunburnt beach of Hérault with her hand in
her mother's--a fisherman's widow, now years since dead. And from
that day she was no longer the fierce companion, but instead, the
protector of Laure, striving always to give the latter some portion of
her own sparse allowance of food; stealing bits of meat out of the
_pots-au-feu_ if the chance ever came her way, sharing all with her;
walking with her arm round her waist, while Laure's head reclined on
her shoulders.
"I shall die," the latter said more than once, "I shall die ere we
reach Marseilles. Oh! Marion, let them not leave me by the wayside."
"Bah!" Marion answered, "you shall not die. I will fight death for
you, wrestle with him, hold you back from him. You have to live."
"For what?" the other would ask. "For what?" and her soft eyes would
look so sad that Marion, still unregenerate, would swear a fierce
southern oath to herself, while she folded Laure to her bosom and
strained her to it with her strong arms. "For what?" Marion would
repeat. "Why, for freedom, first; for justice. That poor imbecile
marching ahead of us" (she was referring to her newly-espoused
husband) "has it seems the gift of writing, at least, since it has
brought him to this pass. We will tell him your history" (for Marion
knew it all now): "then he shall put it into words, and so, somehow,
it shall have its effect. In this new land to which we go there must
be a governor, or vice-regent, or someone in power. He will surely
help you, especially after he has seen you! And there are two other
reasons why you should live."
"I do not know them," Laure faltered.
"You love your husband?"
"Ah!" the other gasped.
"You love him, I say. My God! do I not know what love is!" and she
smote her breast as she spoke. "You love him. You have told me all.
You loved him; you came to love him on the day you married him, the
day he saved you from that--that animal!"
"He is dead!" Laure wailed. "He is dead!"
"I doubt it. Men do not die easily." Possibly, here, too, she was
speaking from experience. "I doubt it. More like, those animals,
Desparre and your uncle, caused him to be arrested and thrown into
prison; remember, they may have encountered him on their road to you.
He may be--who knows?--in the chain that is now on its road to Brest
or Dunkirk."
Laure wrung her hands and shook her head at this, while Marion
continued:--
"Or suppose Desparre lied to you; suppose they had not encountered him
at all. Suppose, I say, he came back to you that night, the next
morning, and found you gone; with none to tell where--you say yourself
that no servant appeared on the scene ere the exempts dragged you
away. Suppose he came back. What then?"
"I do not know; I cannot think."
"I can. He will find out what has become of you, follow you. _Mon
Dieu!_" as a sudden thought flashed into her mind. "Did he not tell
you he meant himself to emigrate to Louisiana, the very place to which
we go. Courage; courage; courage."
"Oh!" Laure gasped, "if--if I dared to hope that."
"Dared to hope! There is nothing else to be supposed but that. He will
be there. Surely, surely, Laure, you will meet your husband in this
colony, big as they say it is. All will be well."
"Nay," she said, "nay. It will never be well. He married me to save me
from Desparre; he had ceased to love me. Yet--yet, if I could see him
once again, only once, I would tell him----"
"What?"
"That I surrendered; that I had come to love him. Yet of what avail
would that? He will be a gentleman planter; I--I a released convict, a
woman earning her bread by labour. Also, he knows--that--I have no
origin."
"He knew it before he married you. And, knowing it, be sure he loved
you." And Marion Lascelles, whether she believed the comforting hopes
she had endeavoured to raise in the other's breast, or whether she had
only uttered them in the desire to put fresh strength into her sad
heart, would hear no word of doubt.
But still the chains went on, the men a mile ahead, the women
following behind. But ever on, and with the journey growing still more
toilsome to these poor creatures worn by this time to skeletons; more
toilsome because they were passing through Haute Loire and Ardèche now
and the mountains were all around them, and had to be climbed by their
bleeding, festering feet. Ascents that had to be made which lasted for
hours, followed by descents as wearying to their aching limbs.
In truth, it might have seemed to any who had observed that chain of
women that it was a small army of dead women which was passing through
the land. An army of dead women who had been burnt black and become
mummified, whose bony frames were enveloped in prison garments,
foul--even for such things--from rain and the mud they had slept in
and the white powdery dust that had blown on to them. Dead women, who,
when they halted, fell prostrate and gasping to the earth, or reclined
against rocks and trees rigidly, with staring, glassy eyes--eyes that
stared, indeed, but saw nothing. Women, in fact, to whose lips the
guards and the sergeants of the prisons--themselves burnt black,
though not worn to skin and bone by constant walking, since they had
their horses and the carts--were forced to hold cups of water, as
otherwise the prisoners must have died of thirst, not being able to
fetch or lift them for themselves. But still--with now half their
number left behind dead, amongst which were two of the women whose
children had been taken from them--they went on. Down by where the
Rhone swept and swirled; past Beaucaire and Tarascon, past Orgon and
Lambèse; past Aix, sacred twenty years before to the slaughter, and
the murder, and the mock trials of many Protestants still toiling at
the galleys, hopeless and heartbroken. On, on, on, until, beneath a
lurid evening sky, the eyes of the guards--but not the sightless eyes
of the women--discerned a great city lying upon the shores of a
limpid, waveless sea.
Marseilles! It was there before them, before the eyes of those men on
horseback and in the carts, only--what was happening, what was doing
in it? That, they could not understand.
For, beneath that lurid and gleaming sky, which had succeeded to an
awful thunderstorm that had passed over the unhappy chain gang an hour
before and drenched them afresh, as they had been drenched so many
times in their long march, they saw fires blazing from pinnacles and
towers, as well as upon the city walls. They knew, too, that similar
fires must be blazing in the streets and market-places and great open
spaces--they knew it by another fierce red light that rose up and
mingled with the red flames and flecks which the sun cast upon the
purple, storm-charged clouds.
"What is it?" a mounted gendarme whispered to a comrade. "What! Can
the storm, the lightning, have set the city in flames? Yet, surely not
in twenty places at once!"
"Nay, nay," the other muttered, his eyes shaded by his hands as he
glanced down to where those flaming lights were illuminating all the
heavens with their glare as the night grew on, and the fires burnt
more fiercely. "Nay; they burn fuel for some reason, they ignite it
themselves."
"What! What! What! For what reasons?"
"God knows," muttered the gendarme, becoming pious under this
awe-inspiring thing which he did not understand. "They did it once
before," the other whispered. "Once! nay, oftener. My grandam was a
Marseillaise. I have heard her tell the tale. They feared the pest."
"The pest--my God! Ere we left Paris people whispered that it had
broken out in the Levant. The Levant! Marseilles trades much there.
What if--if----" he stammered, turning white with fear and
apprehension.
"What if," said his comrade, taking him up, "it should be here!"