THE PEST
Almost did those unhappy women of the cordon, or chain-gang--those
skeletons clad in rags--thank God that something was occurring down
below in the great city, the nature of which they could not divine
beyond the fact that it was horrible, and must be something
portentous, since it delayed their descent from the hill towards the
ships that were, doubtless, now waiting in the harbour to transport
them to New France. For, whatever the cause might be--whether the city
were in flames, or attacked by an enemy from the sea, or set on fire
in different places by the recent lightning--at least they were
enabled to rest; to cast themselves upon the dank earth that reeked
with the recent rain; to lie there with their eyes closed wearily.
Yet, amongst those women was one who knew--or guessed, surely--what
was the cause of those flames; what they signified. The dark woman of
Hérault--the woman who, as a child, had listened to stories told of
not so many years ago, when, forth from this smoking city which lay
now at their feet, had rushed countless people seeking the pure air of
the plains and mountains; people seeking to escape from the stifling
and pestiferous poison of the pest that was lurking in the narrow,
confined streets of Marseilles.
"It has come to the city again," she whispered in Laure's ear, as the
latter lay prostrate by her side--chained to her side--"As it has
come, they say, more than thirty times since first Christ walked the
earth--since Cæsar first made the place his. It must be that it has
come again."
"What?" murmured Laure, not understanding. "What has come? Freedom or
death? Which is it?"
"Probably both," Marion Lascelles answered. "Freedom and death. Both."
Then, because her eyes were clearer than the eyes of many by whom she
was surrounded, and because her great, strong frame had resisted even
the fatigues and the miseries of that terrible journey from Paris to
which so many of her original companions had succumbed--to which all
had succumbed, more or less!--she was able to observe that the mounted
gendarmes and the warders and gaolers were holding close consultation;
and that, also, they looked terror-stricken and agitated. She was able
to observe, too, that a moment later they had been joined by a
creature which had crept up the hill to where they were, and had
slowly drawn near to them. Yet it had done so as though half afraid to
approach too close, or as one who feared that he might be beaten away
as an unknown dog is driven off on approaching too near to the heels
of a stranger.
Thrusting her brown, sunburnt hands through her matted, coal-black
hair, now filled and clotted with mud that had once been the dust of
the long weary roads she had traversed until the rain turned it into
what it was, she parted that hair from off her eyes and glared
transfixed at the figure. It was that of a man almost old, his sparse
white locks glistening in the rays of the moon which now overtopped
the brow of the hill behind them--yet it was neither the man's age nor
his grey hairs that appalled her. Instead, it was his face, which was
of a loathsome yellow hue--it being plainly perceptible in the
moonbeams--as is the face of a man stricken to death with jaundice; a
face covered, too, with huge carbuncles and pustules, and with eyes of
a chalky, dense white, sunken in the hollow sockets.
"It is," Marion muttered hoarsely to herself, "the pest. That man is
sickening, has sickened of it. God help us all! Slave-drivers and
slaves alike. I saw one like him at Toulon once." And again she
muttered, "God help us all!"
Above her murmur, which hardly escaped beyond her white, clenched
teeth, there rose a shout from those whom she termed to herself the
slave-drivers--a shout of fury and of horror.
"Away, leper!" cried the man who had been the most stern of all the
guards, on seeing this figure near to him and his companions; "away,
or I shoot you like a dog," and he wrenched a great horse pistol from
out his belt as he spoke. "Away, I say, to a distance. At once."
The unfortunate, yellow-faced creature did as he was bidden, dragging
himself wearily off for several paces, while falling once, also, upon
one knee, yet recovering himself by the aid of a huge knotted stick he
held in his hands; then he turned and said in a voice which, though
feeble, was still strong enough to be heard:
"In the name of God give me some water. I burn within. Oh! that one
should live and yet endure such agony!"
"You shall have water--later," a warder answered. "Only, approach not
on peril of your life. Presently, a jar of water for you shall be
carried to a spot near here." Then the speaker asked huskily, and in a
voice which trembled with fear, "Is it the pest? Down there--in the
city?"
"It is the pest," the man replied, his awful white eyes gleaming
sickeningly. "They die in hundreds daily. Whole families--whole
streets of families--are dead. All mine are gone--my wife and seven
children. I, too, am stricken after nursing, burying them. I cannot
live. In pity's sake, put that jar of water where I can reach it
ere--ere they come forth!"
"They come forth?" the guards of the cordon exclaimed all together.
"Ere who come forth?"
"Many who are still left alive. All are fleeing who can leave the
city. It is a vast tomb. Hundreds lie dead in the streets--poisoning,
infecting the air. Also, the dogs--they, too, are stricken, through
tearing them. The rooks, likewise, who have swooped down upon the
bodies. God help me! The water! The water The water! Ere they come."
Perhaps it was compassion, perhaps fear, perhaps the knowledge that
ere long they, too, might be burning inwardly from the same cause as
that which now affected this unhappy man, which caused those brutal
custodians to take pity on his sufferings. But, from whatever cause it
might be, at least that pity was shown. A flat, squat bottle holding
about a pint was taken by one of them to a little rising knoll some
seventy yards away and put on the ground; then the pest-stricken man
was told he might go to it.
By now, even as he hobbled and dragged himself on his stick towards
that knoll, his white eyes gleaming horribly, the women of the
chain-gang had somewhat recovered from the stupor in which they had
been lying; some besides Marion Lascelles had even sat up upon the
rain-steeped ground and had heard all that had passed. And, now, they
raised their voices in a shrill clatter, shrieking to their
custodians:
"Release us! Release us! Set us free! We are not doomed to this;
instead, we are on our road to freedom. Strike off these accursed
irons; let us find safety somewhere. None meant that we should perish
thus," while Marion's voice was the loudest, most strident of all,
since she was the strongest and the fiercest.
A common fear--a common horror--was upon everyone by now: women
prisoners and captors, or custodians, alike; all dreaded what was
impending over them. Wherefore their cries and shrieks, which, before
this day, would have been answered with the lash or the heavy riding
wand, were replied to almost kindly.
"Have patience, good women," the gendarmes and guards replied, "have
patience. All may yet be well. If the vessels are in the port they
will soon carry you to sea; to a pure air away from this."
Yet still more hubbub arose from all the women. Those very women who,
upon the weary journey, had prayed that each day might be their last,
screamed at this time for life and safety and preservation from this
awful death--the death by the pest.
"Turn us back," they wailed. "Turn us back. It has not penetrated
inland, or we should have heard of it on the route. Turn us back, or
set us free to escape by ourselves. 'Tis all we ask. It is our due.
The law desires not our death. Above all, no such death as this!"
But again their guardians bade them have patience, telling them that
soon they would be on board the transports and well out upon the pure
bosom of the ocean.
"Well out!" cried Marion Lascelles, her voice still harsh and
strident, her accent defiant and contemptuous. "Well out to sea! Yes,
after traversing that fever-stricken city from one end to the other to
reach the docks. How shall we accomplish that; how will you, who must
accompany us? You! You, too! Can we pass through Marseilles unharmed?
Can you?" and again she emphasised the "you," while striking terror
into the men's hearts and making them quake as they sat on their
horses or reclined in the carts. "All are doomed. We, the prisoners.
You, the gaolers."
Those men knew it was as she said; they knew that their lives were
subject to as much risk, were as certain to be forfeited, as the lives
of the wretched women in their charge. Whereon they trembled and grew
pale, especially since they remembered that this was a woman of the
South, and, therefore, one who doubtless understood what she spoke of.
The people of the Midi had been reared from time immemorial on legends
telling of the horrors of the earlier pests.
Whatever terrors were felt by either prisoners or custodians, women or
men, were now, however, to be doubly, trebly intensified. They were to
see, here, upon this rising upland of sunburnt and, now, rain-soaked
grass, sights even more calculated to make their hearts beat with
apprehension, their nerves tingle, and their lips turn more white.
Forth from the smitten, pestiferous city lying at their feet--that
city which now flared with a hundred fires lit to purify it, if
possible--there came those who could escape while still life remained,
and while the poisonous venom of the scourge had not reduced them to
helplessness. They came dragging themselves feebly if already struck
by the disease; swiftly if, as yet, the fever had not penetrated their
systems nor death set its mark upon them. Walking rapidly in some
cases, crawling in others; running, almost leaping, if able to do so.
Doing anything, thereby to flee away in the open; out into the woods
and plains and mountains--anything to leave behind the accursed city
in which the houses were empty or only filled with corpses; the
accursed streets in which the dead bodies of men and women, of dogs
and crows, lay in huddled masses.
A band of nuns passed first--their heads bound in cloths that had been
steeped in vinegar into which gunpowder had been soaked; their holy
garments trailing on the ground, their rosaries clattering as they
went along, their faces white with terror though not with disease.
These were good, pious women, many of them young, who, until now, when
the panic of dread had seized upon them, had nursed the sick and dying
under the orders of their saintly bishop, Henri de Belsunce de
Castlemoron, but who, at last, had yielded to the fear that was upon
all within Marseilles, and had fled. They had fled from their
cloisters out into the open, rushing away from the city of death,
shrieking to those who were stricken to keep off from them in the name
of God and all his Saints; even arming themselves with what were
called the "Sticks of St. Roch," namely, canes from eight to ten feet
long, wherewith to ward off and push aside the passers-by and,
especially, the dogs which were supposed to be thoroughly infected
from the dead bodies at which they sniffed and sometimes tore. Nay,
not supposed only, since the creatures had already perished by
hundreds from having done so.
Running by their side, endeavouring to keep up with those over whom,
but a little while ago, she had ruled with a stern, unbending power,
went the mother superior, a fat, waddling woman, whose face may have
been comely once, but was now drawn with fright and terror. Yet--with
perhaps some recollections left in her mind, even now, of the sanctity
and charity that should be the accompaniment of her holy calling--she
paused on seeing the group of worn, sunburnt, and emaciated women
sitting there under the charge of their frightened warders, and asked
who and what they were?
"Galley slaves," one of these warders answered; "at least, emigrants.
They go to New France. Can we pass through the city, think you, holy
mother, or reach the ships without danger? Can we go on to safety and
pure breezes?"
"Alas!" the woman answered, gathering up her skirts even as she spoke,
so as to flee as swiftly as might be after her flock, which had gone
on without pausing when she herself did so. "Alas, there are no ships.
The galleys are moored outside 'tis true, but all else have put to sea
to escape. Turn back if you are wise. Ah!" she cried with a scream, a
shriek, as some other fugitives from the city passed near her, their
eyes chalky white, their faces yellow and blotched with great livid
carbuncles. "Oh, keep off! keep off!" And she waved her long stick
around her and then rushed precipitously after her band of nuns.
But still the refugees came forth, singly, in pairs, in families. Some
staggered under burdens which they bore, such as bags containing food
or jars holding water. Numbers of women carried not only babes in
their arms and folded to their breasts, but others strapped on to
their backs. Some men wheeled hand barrows before them with their
choicest household goods flung pell-mell into them; some, even, had
got rough vehicles drawn by horses or cows--in one or two instances by
dogs, and in another by a pig--by the side of which they walked while
their stricken relatives lay gasping within. Yet, even as these latter
passed along, that which was most distinctive in their manner was the
horror which those who still remained unstruck testified for those who
were stricken, yet whom the ties of blood still prompted them to save.
A son passed along with his aged mother dying on the truck he pushed
before him, yet he had bound his mouth up with vinegar-steeped cloths
so that her infected breath should not be inhaled by him; a husband,
whose wife was at the point of death, bore, fastened on his chest, a
small iron tray on which smoked burning sulphur, so that he should
inhale those fumes. Others, too, carried flasks and bottles of
spirituous liquors, from which they drank momentarily; some smoked
incessantly enormous pipes full of rank, coarse tobacco, and drew into
their lungs as much of the fumes as they could bear.
There, too, passed flying domestics and servitors, upon whose coarse
hands sparkled rich and sumptuous rings never made to be worn by such
as they, and carrying in those hands strong boxes and jewel boxes.
None need have asked how they became possessed of such treasures as
these! Imagination would have told at once of dead or dying employers,
of dark houses rifled, and of robbery successful.
Yet these fugitives were such as, up to now, had escaped the deadly
breath of the pest, and were not so horrible as those stricken by that
breath. These latter were too awful to behold as they staggered along
moaning, "I burn! I burn!" and then flung themselves down to lick the
rain-water off the grass beneath them, or to thrust their parched
tongues into rivulets formed by the recent downpour. They flung
themselves down, never, in many cases, to stagger to their feet again.
Exhausted they lay where they fell, and so they died.
The stream of refugees ceased not. Under the rays of the now risen
moon they poured forth continuously from the flaming city beneath
them, their faces lit also by the crimson-illuminated sky above. They
came on in numbers, running or walking, breathlessly if strong,
staggering, falling, moaning, shrieking sometimes, if already attacked
by the pest.
And Marion Lascelles sitting up upon the sodden hill slope, her
hands holding back her matted hair so that the soft wind now blowing
from above should not cause it to obscure her eyes, saw all these
passers-by, and felt a horror in her soul that she had never before
known in her tempestuous life. While, also, she saw something else,
and whispered in the ears of the half inanimate Laure what it was that
she perceived. "Observe, dear one," she muttered, "observe. The
guards, all of them, the gaolers and gendarmes move. They mix with
that rushing crowd; see, they disappear; almost, it seems, they
dissolve into the night. One understands what they have determined to
do. They flee, too; they dare not face this thing. They depart,
leaving us here. The cowards!" And if eyes as well as lips could hurl
contemptuous curses at others, the woman of the South hurled them now
at the departing captors.
"For," she said a moment later, "the safety the creatures seek they do
not give us the opportunity of finding as well. They have left us
chained and manacled so that we, on our part, cannot escape."