"I HAD NOT LIVED TILL NOW, COULD SORROW KILL"
The night wind rose as the hours went by, so that at last the cool
breezes brought ease, and, in a manner, restoration to those unhappy
women lying or sitting upon the slope of the hill which lay to the
north of Marseilles. Gradually, under its influence, many of them
began to feel more strength coming to their wasted and aching limbs,
while others, who up to now had been dazed and stupefied at the end of
their journey, began to understand that the long and terrible march
from Paris was at last concluded; that, henceforth, there was to be no
more dragging of weary, bleeding feet along league after league of
rough and stony roads.
Unhappily, however, as this fact dawned upon them, so did another and
more hideous one--the awful, ghastly fact that they had but escaped
from one terror to be surrounded by a second to which the first was
almost a trifle.
As their senses came back to many of them, such senses being aroused
by the continual excitement of the talk amongst those who were already
awake or had never slept since their arrival, they grasped this fact,
and became aware of what was now threatening them. They grasped the
fact that death in a more horrid garb than that which it had
previously worn had to be faced, and was around them; close to them;
and about to seize them in an awful embrace.
Some started to their feet shrieking as this knowledge dawned upon
them, while clanking their chains as they did so, and endeavouring to
tear from off their necks the loathsome _carcan_, or collar, in their
frenzy, or to rush away from where they were back to the great plain
through which they had passed but a day or so ago, or up to the
vine-clad heights of which they had caught a sight as they drew near
to the end of their journey. Anywhere! Anywhere, away from this new
terror which threatened them. Then, even as they wailed aloud, while
some cast themselves upon their knees and prayed to be spared from the
horrible contagion into which they had advanced, the voice of Marion
Lascelles was heard speaking to them, counselling them as to what they
should do, what measures take to preserve themselves from this fresh
calamity. And, because, all along that dreary road which stretched
from Paris in the north to Marseilles in the south, this woman's
strong, indomitable courage and contempt for suffering and misfortune
had cheered and comforted them, they hearkened to her now. They
welcomed, indeed, any words that fell from her lips.
"Listen," she said, "my sisters in misery. Listen to me. Of what use
is it for each to try and wrest from off her neck the accursed
_carcan_ that encloses it, to tear from off her wrists the accursed
cordon that binds her to her neighbour? It is impossible; not that
they might be thus easily parted with, did the warder rivet them to us
in Paris. Yet, how else have we progressed here but with them on; how
progressed along dusty roads, beneath the burning sun, the beating
rains, over mountains and across valleys. We have done this, I say to
you, yet now the night is fresh and cool."
"Thank God for that. For that," they murmured.
"Ay, thank Him for that. 'Tis well we do so, sinners as most of us
are. We need His help and blessing. But, hear me. Can we not also
retreat together, as we have advanced over all these leagues to this
plague-stricken spot? Can we not?"
But no more words were required from her; already they understood and
grasped her meaning. It was simple enough, yet, heretofore, their
despair and frenzy had prevented them from conceiving that, together,
they might escape from this place, as, together, they had reached it.
With cries of rejoicing and exultation they prepared to do what she
suggested; to flee at once from this awful spot. To join those who
were still pouring out of the city unceasingly, even though the
depth of the night was now upon them; to follow in the wake of those
who had already gone. They knew--those previous fugitives--they must
know--where to flee for safety; to follow them was to reach that
safety themselves.
Weak, enfeebled as they were, they prepared to act upon Marion's
advice; staggeringly they formed themselves once more into the lines
in which they had marched day after day and week after week; they
turned themselves about to unwind the tangled chains which ran from
the first woman of the chain-gang to the last, and placed themselves
in order to at once depart. And it seemed easier to their poor bruised
bodies, easier, too, to their aching hearts, to thus set about these
preparations for seeking safety since there were now no longer brutal
gendarmes nor custodians, nor guards of any kind to lash them with
whips or curse them with foul oaths.
Wherefore they turned back, commencing at once to retrace the road
they had come and walking in the same order as they walked from the
first--since the position of none could be altered. And by Marion's
side was Laure, as ever.
"You are refreshed," the former said to her companion; "you can
accomplish this? Strive--oh! strive--poor soul, to be brave! Remember,
every step we take, every moment, removes us farther and farther from
the risk of this awful thing. Be brave, dear one," and, herself still
strong and brave, unconquered and unconquerable, she placed her arm
around that of her more delicate fellow-prisoner and helped her upon
the way.
"I will be brave," Laure answered. "I will struggle to the end. My
heart is broken, death would be welcome--yet not such a death as this.
Oh! Marion, I do not desire to die thus--like those," and she pointed
to some of the awful yellow-faced victims who were being wheeled or
dragged along, or were staggering by themselves to the mountains and
open country. "Yet, surely," she added, "the risk is as great here as
in the city below, so long as we keep in their vicinity. Is it not?"
"Ay, it is," the other answered. "Yet we will break off from them ere
long. Alas! these chains. If we were only free of them we could all
separate; you and I could climb that little hill together which rises
over there; we could go on and on until the feverous breath of the
pest was left behind. But we can do nothing. All must stay together."
Still they went on, however--not swiftly, because amongst them there
was not one, not even Marion herself, who could progress otherwise
than slowly, owing to the fatigue that was upon them after their long
march, and owing, also, to the weight of their irons, as well as to
the fact that they were almost famished. Their last meal had been
eaten at midday, and they had been promised a full one by their late
guardians on entering the gates of Marseilles. Yet, now, they were
retreating from Marseilles, and there were no guardians left to
provide for them. When, Marion wondered, would they ever eat again;
how would food be found for the mouths of all in their company? There
were still some twenty women left chained together; how could they be
fed?
Even, however, as she reflected on all this, another thought arose in
her mind; one that had had no existence in it for many hours, or,
indeed, days.
"Where is the men's chain-gang, I wonder?" she mused aloud. "The men
who, poor wretches, are in many cases our newly-made husbands. Where
can they be? They were ahead of us all the way; therefore, since we
have not passed them, and since, also, we halted within musket-shot of
the city, it follows that they, at least, have entered the doomed
place--are doomed themselves. Great God! we who survive this are as
like as not to be widows again soon," and she laughed a harsh,
strident laugh that had no mirth in it, but was born of the bitterness
within her.
Those words "our newly-made husbands" gave rise to thoughts in Laure's
own sad heart that she would willingly have stifled if she had
possessed the power to do so. They recalled memories that (when she
had not been too dazed--almost too delirious--to dwell upon them
during the horrors of the past six weeks) she had endeavoured to
dispel. Memories of the noble Englishman who had sacrificed his
existence for her--nay! if that villain Desparre had spoken truth, his
very life--and whose sacrifice had obtained for her no more than the
state of misery in which she was now plunged.
"Yet," she whispered, half to herself, half aloud, so that Marion
heard her words; "yet, almost I pray that he may be dead----"
"Your husband?" the other interrupted. "You pray that he may be dead!
He who gave up all for you--the man whom you love. Whom, Laure, you
know you love?" For still Marion insisted, as she had insisted often
enough before during the journey, that Laure had come to love Walter
Clarges.
"Yes--I even pray for that--sometimes," the girl answered. "For--for
if he lives, how doubly vile must he deem me. What must he think of
me, supposing--supposing that Desparre lied--that he was not
dead--that he was not even met by that villain and his myrmidons--that
the whole story was false!"
"What should he think!" exclaimed Marion, not, in truth, grasping
Laure's meaning. "What should he think?"
"What? Why think that but I used him for my own selfish purposes to
escape from marriage with Desparre, as, God forgive me, was the case;
and that, once he had left me alone in his home, I next escaped from
him. How can he know--how dream of what befell me? Who was there to
tell him of what happened in that room? Even I, myself, know nothing
of what occurred from the time I fell prostrate at Desparre's feet,
until I awoke a prisoner in that--that prison, which I only left for
this," and she cast her eyes despairingly around upon her miserable
companions and upon the flying inhabitants of the stricken city who
still went on and on, their one hope being to leave the place behind.
But the brave heart, the strong mind of Marion Lascelles--neither of
which could be subdued by even that which now encompassed them--would
not for an instant agree to such hopelessness as her companion
expressed. Instead, she cried:
"Nay, nay. He would not do so. Believe that Desparre lied when he said
that your husband was dead, since how could such a creeping snake as
that slay such as he was, one so noble. Believe he lived, and, thus
living, returned to find you gone. But, in doing so----"
"He would hate, despise, loathe me. He would deem me what I was, base
and contemptible, and so, God help me! endeavour to forget. He would
remember nothing except that he had parted with his freedom for ever
to save so vile a thing as I."
"Again I say nay, Laure," and now Marion's voice sank even lower, her
tone became more deep. "Laure, I know the hearts of men--God help
_me_, too!--I have had cause to know them--bitter cause, brought about
sometimes by my own errors, sometimes by their own wickedness. And
I--I tell you, you have judged wrongly. This man, this Englishman,
loved you with his whole heart and soul; he loves you still."
"Alas! alas! it cannot be," Laure murmured. "It is impossible."
"At first," Marion went on, "he may, it is true, deem that you used
him only as a tool. He may do so because no man who ever lived has yet
understood woman's nature--ever sounded the depths of that nature.
Therefore, not knowing, as they none of them know, our hearts, he may
at first believe, as you say, that you sacrificed his existence to
your salvation. Not understanding, not guessing in his man's blindness
that, as he made the sacrifice, so the love for him sprang newborn
into your heart. Is it not so, Laure? Here in the midst of all these
horrors with which we are surrounded, here with death close at hand,
with infection in the air, ready to seize on one or all at any moment,
answer me. Speak truth as you would speak it on your death-bed. You
love him--loved him from that moment? Answer! Is it not so?"
"Yes," Laure said, faintly, her whisper being almost drowned in the
soft, cool breeze that came sweeping over them from the distant
mountain-tops of the Basses Alpes. "Yes, I loved him from the
first--from the moment when he took me to his house. Oh, God!" she
murmured, "when he told me that we must part, deeming that I could
never love him, almost I threw myself at his feet, almost I rushed to
his arms beseeching him to fold me in them, to stay by my side for
ever. And now--now--we shall never meet again."
"Never meet again, perhaps," said Marion, scorning to hold out hopes
to the other that she could not believe were ever likely to be
realised; "yet of one thing be sure, namely, that he will seek for
you. As time goes on he will learn the truth--how, I cannot tell, yet
surely he must learn it--and then--and then no power on earth, nothing
short of the will of God will prevent him from seeking for you."
"And finding me dead. Here, or in the new land to which we go."
"The new land to which we go!" Marion echoed, scornfully. "The new
land to which we go! I doubt if that will ever be. If it were not for
these cursed irons we should be free now--free for ever. We could
disperse singly, or in couples, wander forth over France, even seek
other lands. And--and you could write to him."
"Ah!" Laure exclaimed. "Write to him! To do that! Oh, Marion, Marion,
you are so strong, so brave! Set us free! Set us free! Set us free!"
Alas! that Marion should have spoken those words, or have let them
fall on Laure's ears, thus raising desires and expectations never to
be gratified. There was no freedom to come to them--none from so awful
a captivity as that which was now to enslave them.
For, even as Laure uttered her wail for freedom, which was born of her
companion's hopeful words, the atom of liberty they possessed--the
liberty of being able to remove from this fever-tainted spot to some
other that remained still unpoisoned by the breath of the pestilence,
although shackled and chained altogether--was taken away.
There came up swiftly behind them a band of men; they were a number of
convicts, drawn from the galleys lying at the Quai de Riveneuve, as
well as several of the beggars of Marseilles, known as "the crows:"
beggars who were employed and told off to act under the orders of the
sheriffs in removing the dead from the streets, in lighting nightly
the fires to purge the city, and in fulfilling the duties of the
police--mostly dead themselves by this time.
And in command of them were two sheriffs.
"These are the women, the emigrants," one of the latter said to the
other. "'Twas certain they could not be very far behind the men." Then
the speaker, who was mounted, rode his horse up to where this group of
desolate, forlorn wanderers stood hesitating while appalled by the
sudden stoppage of their escape, and said--
"Good women, whither are you going? Your destiny is Marseilles, en
route for New France."
For a moment those unhappy women stood helpless and silent, gazing
into each other's worn faces, not knowing what answer to make or what
to say. In truth they were paralysed with the fear that was upon them,
namely, that they were about to be driven into the infected city,
paralysed also with grief at their escape being cut off.
"Answer," the Sheriff said, not speaking harshly. And then, with all
the eyes of her companions in misery fixed on her and bidding her
plainly enough to act as their mouthpiece, Marion said--
"Those who drove us from Paris here have fled in fear of the contagion
that is amongst you. We, too, have sought to flee away from it. The
law which condemned us to transportation to New France, to be followed
by our freedom, did not condemn us to this."
"You speak truth," the Sheriff said, his voice a grave and solemn, yet
not unkindly, one. "Yet you must go on with what you are sent here
for. And--and--we need women's help here, such help as nursing and so
forth. You must come with us and stay until the ships, which have put
to sea in fear, return to transport you to New France."
"It is tyranny!" Marion Lascelles exclaimed. "Tyranny to force us
thus!"
"Not so," the Sheriff replied. "Not so. You will be treated well; your
freedom will begin at once. Your irons shall be struck off now. Also,
while you remain with us and work for us--heaven knows how we require
assistance--you shall have a daily wage and good food. But--you must
come."
"We shall die," Marion exclaimed, acting still as the spokeswoman of
all. "And our deaths will lie at your door."
But still the Sheriff spoke very gently, saying that, even so, they
must do as he bid them. Then, next, he ordered some of the convicts to
stand forward and remove their chains and collars, so that even the
short distance to be accomplished ere reaching the city should be no
more irksome than possible.
After which he said to the group of women, many of whom were sobbing
around him, some with fear of what they were about to encounter, and
some with joy at losing at last, their horrible, hateful iron burdens.
"Do not weep. Do not weep. Already is our once bright, joyous city a
vale of tears. Nay, there can be, I think, no more tears left for us
to shed. I myself can weep no more. I who, in the last week, have
buried my wife, my two daughters, and my little infant babe."
"Oh! oh!" gasped Marion and Laure and all the women standing round who
heard the bereaved man's words. "Oh! Unhappy man. Unhappy man!"