WITHIN THE WALLS
Midnight sounded from the tower of the ancient cathedral of
Marseilles--the deep tones of the bell, in unison with all the bells
of the other churches in the stricken city, being borne across the
upland by the soft breeze from off the Mediterranean to where the
women of the cordon stood--and those women were free at last from one
awful form of suffering. The hateful collar was gone from off their
necks; the chains that looped and bound them together had fallen from
their wrists under the blows of the convicts, and lay in a mass upon
the ground. They could hold up their heads and straighten the backs
which had been bowed so long by the weight of the collar; they could
stretch their limbs and rejoice--if such women could ever rejoice
again at aught!--that they might raise their arms unencumbered by
either steel or iron shackles. Yet, around their necks, around their
arms, were impressed livid marks that, if they should live, it would
take months to efface. More months than it had taken to produce the
impression which the things had stamped into their flesh.
Then the order was given by the Sheriff, that broken-hearted man, that
they should descend into the city; the very tones in which it was
uttered--so different from the harsh, cruel commands of the men who
had escorted the forlorn women from Paris!--being almost enough to
make compliance with that order easy.
"Come," said Marion Lascelles to Laure, "come, dear one. Even though
we march into the jaws of death, at least we go no longer as slaves,
but as freed women. Let be. Things might be worse. Had those cowardly
dogs, our warders, stayed by our side we should have been whipped or
cursed into this nest of pestilence."
So they went on, following their sorrowful guide; the men of the
galleys marching near them and relating the awful ravages of the
plague which had stricken the city. Yet not without some exclamations
of satisfaction issuing from the lips of those outcasts and mingling
with their story, since they dilated on the freedom which was now
theirs--except at nights when they were re-conducted to the galleys
moored by the Quai de Riveneuve; and on, also, the better class of
food which--at present! but at present only--they were able to obtain.
Upon, too, the almost certain fact of their being entirely pardoned
and released when the pestilence should at last be over.
"Will that come to us--if we live?" murmured Laure to the man who
walked by the side of her and of Marion. "Will anything we do here,
and any dangers to life we encounter, give us our pardon; save us from
voyaging to that unknown land?"
"Will it, _ma belle!_" answered the convict--a brawny, muscular,
fellow, who would have been a splendid specimen of humanity but for
the fact that he was gaunt and yellow and hideously disfigured by the
white cloth steeped in vinegar which he wore swathed round his lower
jaw, so that he might continuously inhale the aromatic flavour with
each breath he drew. "Will it! Who can doubt it! And, if not,
why--name, of a dog!--are we not free already?"
"Free! How?"
"In a manner we are so. What control is there over us--over you,
especially? You will live in the streets--or, if you prefer it, in any
house you choose to enter; have a care, though, that it is one from
which the healthy have fled in fear, not one in which the dead lie
poisoning the air. At any moment you can hide yourselves away. While
for us--well, there will come a night when we shall not return to the
galleys. That is all."
"Has," asked Marion, "a chain of male emigrants entered Marseilles but
a few hours before us? They should have done so, seeing that they were
not more than a day in advance."
"Yes, yes. They have come. Yet their fortune was different; better or
worse than yours, according to how one regards it. One of the merchant
ships was still in the port--off the port--a league out to sea, and,
well, they risked it. They took the human cargo; they are gone for New
France. Had you a man amongst them whom you loved, my black beauty?"
he asked, gazing into the dark eyes of Marion, those eyes whose
splendour not all she had gone through could dull.
"My husband was amongst them," she replied quietly; while, to herself,
she added: "Poor wretch! He did little enough good in marrying me. Yet
this leaves me free to devote myself to her."
"Your husband," the convict exclaimed with a laugh. "Your husband?
Good! he will never claim you. You can take another if you desire--the
first one who falls in love with those superb glances."
"Vagabond! be still," she answered, with such a look from the very
eyes he had been praising that the man was silent.
They were by now close to the northern gate of Marseilles; and here
for a little while they halted, the Sheriff, whose name was Le
Vieux--and who is still remembered there for his acts of mercy and
goodness to all--addressing some archers who formed a group outside
the gate, and bidding them produce food and wine, as well as some
vinegar-steeped cloths for the neck of each woman.
"Who are they?" asked another Sheriff, who came up at this moment,
while he scanned the worn and emaciated women and ran his eyes over
their dusty and weather-stained clothes. "Surely you are not bringing
to our charnel house the refugees from other stricken towns? Not from
Toulon and Arles?"
"Nay," replied Le Vieux, "not so. But women who may, by God's grace,
be yet of some service to those left alive. If there are any!" he
added ominously. Then he asked: "What is the count to-day?"
The other shrugged his shoulders ere he replied:
"There is no count. It is abandoned. Who shall count? The tellers
die themselves ere the record is made. Poublanc made a list
yesterday--now----"
"He is not dead? My God I he is not dead?" The other nodded his head
solemnly. After which he said:
"He lies on his doorstep--dead. He was struck this morning--now----!"
* * * * * *
It was a charnel-house to which the Cordon entered! The second Sheriff
had spoken truly!
Yet, at this time, but half of the ninety thousand[4] who were to die
in Marseilles of this pestilence had achieved their doom. Still, all
was bad enough--awful, heart-rending! Not since ten thousand people
died daily in Rome, in the first century of the Christian era, had so
horrible a blight fallen upon any city. Nor had any city presented so
terrible a sight as did Marseilles now when the women entered it,
while glancing shudderingly to right and left as they passed along.
The dead lay unburied in the streets where they had fallen--men,
women, and children being huddled together in heaps; it seemed even as
if, after one heap had lain there for some hours, another had fallen
on top of it, so that one might suppose that these second layers of
dead represented those who, coming forth to search for their kindred
and friends, had in their turn been stricken and fallen over them.
There were also the bodies of many dogs lying stretched by the sides
of the human victims, it being thought afterwards that they had taken
the infection through sniffing at and caressing those who were dear to
them. Yet--heart-rending as such a sight as this was to see, and
doubly so as the women regarded it, partly under the rays of the moon
and partly by aid of the flames of the fires which had been lit to
destroy the contagion if possible--there was still worse to be
witnessed.
This was the sight of those still left alive.
The women who had once formed the chain of female emigrants, and who,
unfettered at last, marched along in company towards a spot where the
Sheriff had said they would be able to sleep in peace for the
remainder of the night, were now passing down a public promenade which
ran for some three hundred yards through the principal part of the
city. This promenade was known as Le Cours, and was bordered on each
side by trees, mostly acacias and limes, which in summer threw a
pleasant shade over the sitters and strollers during the day time,
and, in the evening of the same season, had often served as a place
for summer evening fetes to be held in, for open-air balmasqués, and
as a rendezvous for lovers. Now the picture it presented was
frightful!
In its midst there was a fountain with water gushing from the lips of
fauns, nymphs, and satyrs into a basin beneath, and at that fountain
the moon showed poor stricken men drinking copiously to cool their
burning thirst, or leaning over the smooth sides of the basin and
holding their extended tongues in the water. Or they lay gasping with
their heads against the stone-work, in their endeavours to cool the
heat of their throbbing brains, and to still, if might be, the
splitting headaches which racked them. For clothes, many had nothing
about them but a counterpane snatched hastily from off a bed ere they
had rushed forth in agony unspeakable; often, too, when they had left
their houses fully dressed, they had torn off their apparel in their
inability to bear the warmth imparted by the garments. Yet numbers of
them were not poor--if outward signs were sure testimony of wealth.
One woman--young, perhaps beautiful, ere stricken by the disfiguring
signs of the pest--was resplendent on breast and neck and hands with
jewels that glittered in the moonbeams. Doubtless she had seized all
she owned ere rushing from her house in misery!
If death levels all, so, too, had the pest in this desolated city
plunged into strange companionship persons who, in other days, would
never have been brought together. Hard by this bedizened woman was
another, a woman of the people--perhaps a beggar, or a work girl, or a
washer-woman at the best--who screamed and wailed over a dead babe
lying in her lap. At her side was an old man, well clad and handsomely
belaced, who shrieked forth offers of pistoles and louis' to any who
would ease him of his pain, and then suddenly paused to call to him a
dog hard by, to utter endearing words to it, and to endeavour to
persuade it to draw near to him and quit the spot on which it lay
writhing. A beggar, too! an awful thing of rags and patches! sat
gibbering near them, and held out a can into which a monk passing by
poured some soup, as he did into many others--yet, no sooner had the
man put the stuff to his mouth than he hurled away the can, shrieking
that the broth burned him to the vitals.
"This is the end," muttered Marion to herself, her dark eyes roving
over all and seeing all as the women passed along--themselves now
hideous in their vinegar-steeped wrappings--"the end of our journey!"
Then she glanced down, frightened, at Laure, to see if she had heard
her words. And she observed that this woman of gentler nature was
walking by her side with her eyes closed, while supported and guided
only by her own tender arm. The sight was too awful for Laure to gaze
upon.
The alley led into a street called La Rue de la Bourse, a broad and
stately one, full of large commodious houses such as the merchants of
Marseilles had been accustomed to inhabit for some centuries. Now, it
was deserted by all living things, while, at the same time, the dead
lay in the streets as thick as autumn leaves. Huddled together they
lay; some with their faces horribly distorted, some almost placid as
though they had died in their sleep, some with their heads broken in!
These were the people who had leapt from their windows in a frenzy of
delirium or in an agony of pain; or, being dead, had been flung forth
from those windows by the convicts and galley-slaves who had been sent
into the houses to free them from the poisonous bodies of those who
had expired.
Marion noticed, too, that the still living were driven off the
thresholds of some houses to which they clung--one man, who looked
like the master of the abode, was pouring cold water from a bucket
down the steps, so that none would be likely to lie there. And, next,
she heard a piteous dialogue between two others.
"It is my own house--my own house!" a man, writhing in a porch close
to where she was, gasped to another who parleyed with him from a door
open about half a foot. "Oh, my son! my son! let me die here on my own
doorstep, if I may not enter."
Then the son answered, his tones being muffled by the aromatic
bandages around his face:
"My father, it cannot be. Not because I am cruel to you, but because I
must be kind to others still unstruck. Your wife and mine, also myself
and my babes, are still free from the fever. Would you slay all, yet
with no avail to yourself? My father, think of us," and he shut the
door gently on the man while beseeching him once again to begone and
to carry the contagion he bore about him far away from the house which
contained all that should be dear to him.
"Brute!" cried Marion, hearing all this. "Brute! Animal!"
Then, because of her warm, impetuous Southern nature, she hurled more
than one curse up at the window from which she saw the son's white
face looking forth by now.
"Nay, nay," murmured the dying old man, while understanding. "Nay,
curse him not, good woman. He speaks well. Why should I poison them?
And--I am old, very old. I must have died soon in any hap. It matters
not."
"There are houses here," whispered the convict, who still walked by
Marion's and Laure's side, "at the end of the street, which are, by
some marvel, unaffected. Yet, also, they are deserted, because they
are so near to the poisoned ones. Seek shelter in one for the night, I
counsel you."
"Show me one of such," said Marion. "If there is room enough for all
of us," and she indicated with her eyes that she referred to the other
women who had marched in company from Paris.
"Follow me, then. There is a house at the end, the mansion of one of
our richest merchants. Yet he and all are gone; they have escaped
safely in one of his ships to sea. He will not return for months; not
until the city is free and purged. 'Twould hold a regiment," he added.
Then he led the way down towards the house he spoke of.
"To-morrow," he continued, "the Sheriffs will ask me where you are
disposed of, and I must say, since you will be required to lend aid.
Meanwhile, sleep well, all you women. Above all, when you are in, shut
fast every window so that no air enters the house to infect it. Forget
not."
"Be sure I will remember," Marion replied. "As well as to shut the
doors," she added, not liking too much the looks of this stalwart,
though gaunt ruffian, and mistrusting his familiarity, in spite of the
services he had more or less rendered them.
But the man only laughed, yet with some slight confusion apparent in
his manner, and said:
"Oh! you are too much of my own kind to have any fear. You women have
nothing to be robbed of--nothing to lose. And--Marseilles is full of
everything which any can desire, except food and health. Here is the
house. If you like it not, there are many others."
Casting her eyes up at what was in truth a mansion, Marion answered
that it would do very well. Then she advanced up the steps towards it,
still leading and supporting Laure, and bidding all the other women
follow her.
"My sisters," she cried, "here is rest and shelter from the poisoned
air of the city. And there should be good beds and couches within. Ah!
we have none of us known a bed for so long. We should sleep well
here."
Whereupon one and all filed in after her, uttering prayers that the
pestilence might not be lurking within the place and making it even
more dangerous than the open air.
"Fear not," the man replied. "Fear not. The owner fled at the first
outbreak. Not one has died here unless--unless some have crawled in to
do so. It is untainted."
"Now," said Marion to him, "begone and leave us. To-morrow we will do
aught that we are bidden. You will find us here," and as he stood upon
the steps of the house, she closed the door.
The place echoed gloomily with the reverberation. It appeared to be a
vast, mournful building as they cast their eyes around the great hall
into which the moonlight streamed through a window above the stairs.
Mournful now all deserted as it was, yet a building in which many a
festival and much gaiety had, for sure, taken place in vanished years.
The stairs were richly carpeted; so, too, the hall. Upon the walls
hung pictures and quaint curiosities, brought, doubtless, by the
owner's ships from far-off ports; bronzes and silken banners, great
jars of Eastern workmanship, savage weapons and shields and tokens;
also statues and statuettes in niches and corners.
"The mansion of a rich, wealthy merchant," Marion thought to herself,
seeing all these things plainly in the pure moonlight streaming from
the untainted heavens above. "The home of gentle women and bright,
happy men. Now, the refuge of such as we are--lepers, outcasts,
gaol-birds."
And even as she so thought, Marion pushed open a door on the right of
the hall, when, seeing that it led to a rich, handsome salon, she bade
her companions follow her.