FACE TO FACE
It was during the day preceding the night on which those unhappy,
forlorn women were conducted down to the north gates of the
pest-ridden city that Walter Clarges himself entered Marseilles.
He had passed those women on the previous night, unseen in the
darkness and himself unseeing, while they, worn out and inert, lay in
some barns and outhouses belonging to a farm some miles off the city.
He had ridden by within two hundred yards of where the woman he loved
so much was enfolded in the arms of Marion Lascelles, half dead with
fatigue and misery. He had ridden by, not dreaming how near they were
to each other!
On the morning following he had also passed, not knowing whom it
contained, the travelling carriage of the man who had wrought so much
evil in his own and his wife's life; he had gone on fast and swiftly
towards Marseilles, impelled to even greater speed by the first news
of the horror which had fallen on the city, as well as by the hope
that he might be in time to rescue her from that horror and the danger
of an awful death. And, if not that--if happily, for so he must deem
it now, she, with the other female prisoners, should have been sent on
board the transports for New France and already departed--then he was
still full of the determination to follow her across the ocean, and
so, ultimately, effect her freedom.
Only an hour or two later, and after he and the villain Desparre had
passed the spot where the first news of the pest was heard by them, La
Châine went by too. Yet, by that time all around and within the inn
was desolate, while the place itself was abandoned and shut up, the
landlord and his family having closed the house and joined the other
refugees in their flight. The spot was too near to Marseilles to make
it safe to remain there; it was too much visited by the stricken
inhabitants as they fled to the open country to continue long
unattacked by the poisonous germs brought with them by those
inhabitants.
Walter entered the city, therefore, on the midday preceding the
arrival of those unhappy, forlorn women; he entered it at last after
having made what was, perhaps, one of the fastest journeys ever yet
effected from Paris to the great city in the South, so often spoken of
in happier days, by those who dwelt therein, as the Queen of the
Mediterranean.
How he had done it, how compassed all those leagues, he hardly knew.
Indeed, he could scarcely have given a description of how that long
journey had been made, and seemed, in truth, to remember nothing
beyond the fact that it had been accomplished more by the lavish use
of money than aught else. He had (he could recall, as he looked back
to what appeared almost an indistinct dream) bought more than one
horse and ridden it to a standstill; and had, next, hired as swift a
travelling carriage as it was possible to obtain, so that, thereby, he
might snatch some hour or so of rest. Then he remembered that he had
also left that in its turn, had bought another horse--and--and
had--nay, he could scarcely recollect what it was he had done next,
how progressed, where slept, and how taken food and nourishment. Yet,
what mattered? He had done it. He was here at last. That was enough.
But now that he was in the great seething plague spot, now that he was
here and riding his horse down Le Cours amidst heaps of decaying dead,
both human and canine (with, also, some crows poisoned and lying dead
from pecking at those who were stricken), all of whom tainted the air
and spread fresh poison and disease around, how was he to find her?
And if he found her, in _what_ condition would it be? Would she be
there, and his eyes glanced stealthily, nervously towards those
heaps--or--or--would he never find her at all! Some--he had been told
at the gate, where they handed him the repulsive cloth steeped in
vinegar which he was bidden to wrap round his neck--were destroyed by
quicklime as they died; while there was an awful whisper going about
that the thousands of dead now lying in the streets were to be burnt
in one vast holocaust, and that, likewise, the houses in which more
than a certain number had died were to be closed up for a long
space of time with what was termed "walled up doors and windows."
Suppose--suppose, therefore, she had died, or should die, in any of
these circumstances, and he should never find her--never hear of her
again! Never, although he had reached the very place in which she was!
Suppose he should never know what had been her actual fate!
"I must find her," he muttered; "I must find her!" And he prayed God
that he might do so ere long; that he might discover her alive and
well, so that he could rescue her from this loathsome place and take
her away with him to safety and health. He could make her so happy now
that he was rich. He must find her!
At the gate where he had been given the disinfectants, the man in
charge stared at him as one stares at a madman or some foolhardy
creature who insists on doing the very thing which all people
possessed of sanity are intent upon not doing at any cost. He stared
at the well-dressed stranger, who, flinging himself off his horse, had
battered at the gate to be let in--much the same as, on the other side
of it, people battered against it in their desire to be let out.
"Admit you!" exclaimed the galley slave who now filled the post of the
dead and gone gate-keepers (with, for reward, a prospect of freedom
before him when the pest should be finally over, if he should be alive
by that time). "Admit you! Name of Heaven one does not often hear that
request! Are you sick of life? It must be so!"
"Nay; instead, I seek to preserve life, even though I lose my own in
doing so. To preserve the life of one I love." Then, observing the
man's strange appearance, his red cap and convict's garb, he asked:
"Are you the warder of the gate?"
"For want of better! When one has not a snipe they take a blackbird. I
am the substitute of the warders. They lie in the outhouse now. I may
lie there, too, ere long."
"Has--has any cordon of women--female convicts--emigrants--passed in
lately? From Paris? Speak, I beseech you," and he had again recourse
to that which had not failed him yet, a gift of money.
The man pocketed the double piece in an instant. Then he said: "I
cannot say. I was sent here but yesterday--the warders would have
known."
"Go and ask them."
"Ask them. _Ciel!_ they would return a strange answer. Man, they are
dead! Do you not understand?"
"Is everybody dead in this unhappy place?" Walter asked, despairingly.
"Not yet. But as like as not they will soon be. You see, _mon ami_, we
die gaily. Of us, of us others--gentlemen condemned for crimes we
never committed--forty were sent into the city from our galleys two
days ago. Four remain alive. I am one." Then, changing the subject, he
said: "Is the life you love that of a woman who comes--or has come--in
the cordon of which you speak?"
"God pity me! yes. She is my wife. Yet an innocent."
"Ha! An innocent. So! so! We are all innocent--all the convicts and
convict emigrants. Also, our woman-kind. Well! enter, go find her if
she is here. Then, away at once. Escape is easy, for the sufficient
reason there will be none to stop you."
"Why not, therefore, flee yourself?"
"Oh I as for that, we have our reasons. We may grow rich by remaining,
and we are paid eight livres a day to encourage us. There is much
hidden treasure. And our costume is a little pronounced. We should not
get far. Moreover," with a look of incredible cunning, "we shall get
our yellow paper, our 'passport,' if we do well and survive! We shall
be gentlemen at large once more. If we survive!"
Sickened by the sordid calculations of this criminal, Walter Clarges
turned away, then, addressing the man once more, he said:
"I will go seek through the city for my wife. If I find her not I will
return to you. You will tell me if the cordon I have spoken of
arrives. Will you not?" and again he had recourse to the usual mode of
obtaining favours.
"Ay! never fear. If they come in you shall know of it."
Whereon Walter Clarges took his way down Le Cours and traversed the
rows of dead and dying who lay all around him at his horse's feet,
seeing as he went along the same horrors that, in the coming midnight,
his wife and her companions in misery were also to gaze upon. The
daylight showed him more than the dark of twelve hours later was to
show to them, yet robbed, perhaps, the surroundings of some of those
tragic shadows and black suggestions which night ever brings, or, at
least, hints at.
It was almost incredible that the ravages of an all devouring plague,
accompanied in human minds by the most terrible fear that can haunt
them--the fear of a swift-approaching, loathsome death--could have so
transformed an always gay, and generally brilliant, city into such a
place as it had now become. Incredible, also, that those who still
lived while dreading a death that might creep stealthily on them at
any moment, could act towards those already dead with the callous
indifference which they actually exhibited.
He saw some convicts flinging bodies from windows, high up in the
houses, down into the streets, where they would lie till some steps
could be taken for gathering and removing them--and he shuddered while
seeing that now and again the wretches laughed, even though the very
work that they were about might be at the moment impregnating them
with the disease itself. He saw a pretty woman--a once pretty
woman--flung forth in a sheet; an old man hurled naked from a window;
while a little babe would sometimes excite their derision, if, in the
flight to earth, anything happened that might be considered sufficient
to arouse it. He saw, too, lost children shrieking for their
parents--long afterwards it came to his knowledge that, in this time
of trouble and disorder, some strange mistakes had been made with
these little creatures. He learnt that beggars' offspring had
undoubtedly become confused with the children of rich merchants who
had died from the pest, and that the reverse had also happened. In one
case, many years afterwards (the account of which reached England and
was much discussed) a merchant's child had been mistaken for that of
an outcast woman, and had eventually earned its living as a domestic
servant working for the very pauper child who had, by another mistake,
been put in possession of the wealth the other should have inherited.
Still, he went on; nerved, steeled to endure such sights; determined
that neither regiments of dead, nor battalions of dying, nor scores of
frightened, trembling inhabitants fleeing to what they hoped might be
safety in some distant, untouched village, should prevent him from
seeking for the woman he had loved madly since first his eyes rested
on her. The woman he had won for his wife only to lose a few hours
later!
Through terrible spectacles he went, scanning every female form and
face, looking for women who might be clad in the coarse sacking of the
convict _emigrée_; peering at dying women and at dead. And he knew, he
could not fail to recognise, how awful a grip this pest had got on the
city, not only by the forms he saw lying about, but by the action of
the living. Monks and priests were passing to and fro, one holding a
can of broth, another administering the liquid to the stricken; yet
all, he observed, pressing hard to their own nostrils the
aromatically-steeped cloths with which they endeavoured to preserve
their own lives. He saw, too, an old and reverend bishop passing
across a market place, attended by some of his priests, who gave
benedictions to all around him and wept even as he did so. A bishop,
who, calm with that holy calm which he was surely fitted to be the
possessor of, disdained to do more than wear around his neck the
bandage which might preserve him from contagion. He pressed nothing to
his lips, but, instead, used those lips to utter prayers and to bestow
blessings all around him. This was, although Walter knew it not, the
saintly Belsunce de Castelmoron, the Reverend Bishop of Marseilles, of
whom Pope afterwards wrote:
"Why drew Marseilles' good bishop purer breath,
When nature sickened, and each gate was Death?"
Of convicts, galley slaves, there were many everywhere, since, as soon
as one batch sent from the vessels lying at the Quai de Riveneuve was
decimated, or more than decimated, another was turned into the city to
assist in removing the dead, and, where possible, burying them within
the city ramparts and port-walls, which had been discovered to be not
entirely solid but to possess large vacant spaces within them that
might serve as catacombs. And, also, they were removing many to the
churches, the vaults of which were opened, and, when stuffed full of
the dead, were filled with quicklime and closed up again, it
remaining doubtful, however, if the churches themselves could be used
for worship for many years to come.
In that dreadful ride he saw and heard such things that he wondered he
did not, himself, fall dead off his horse from horror. He saw men and
their wives afraid to approach each other for fear of contracting
contagion; he observed many people running about the streets who had
gone mad from fright; once, in the midst of all these shocking
surroundings, he perceived a wedding party--the bride and bridegroom
laughing and shrieking, while the man, who was either overcome with
drink or frenzy, called out boisterously, "Thy uncle can thwart us no
more, Julie. The pest has done us this service at least."
Next, he passed through a street at which a little trading was taking
place, some provisions being sold there. Yet he noticed what
precautions prevailed over even such transactions as these. He saw a
great cauldron of boiling water with a fire burning fiercely beneath
it, and into this cauldron was plunged every coin that changed hands,
pincers being used for the purpose. It was feared that even the pieces
of metal might convey the disease! And he observed that those who
brought fish to sell were driven away with shouts and execrations, and
made to retire with their bundles. It was rumoured, he heard one man
say, that all the fish near land were poisoned and infected by the
bodies that had been cast into the sea.
The night drew near as still he paced the city streets and open
places, and he knew that both he and his horse must rest
somewhere--either out in the open or in some deserted house or stable.
Food, too, must be obtained for both. Only--where?
Then he determined he would make his way back to the gate and discover
if, by any chance, the chain-gang of women had yet arrived. If it had
not, it must, he felt sure, be very near, or--perhaps--already lying
outside the city. To-morrow at daybreak he would begin his search
again.
Remembering the way he had come, guided by terrible signs, by shocking
sights which he recollected having passed on his way to the spot he
was now returning from; guided, also, by the glow left by the sun as
it began to sink, he went on his road back towards the gate, observing
the names of the streets at the corners as he did so. One, which now
he was passing through, and which he noticed was called _La Rue des
Carmes Déchaussés_, seemed to have, for some reason, been more
deserted by its inhabitants than several others he had traversed.
Perhaps, he thought, because the fever had developed itself more
pronouncedly here than elsewhere; perhaps because the inhabitants were
wealthy enough to take themselves off at the first sign of the
approach of the pestilence. That might be so. Now, the doors and, in
many cases, the windows stood open; he could see through these
windows--even in the fast falling dusk--that the rooms were
sumptuously furnished, yet how desolate and neglected all seemed! How
fearful must have been the terror of their owners when they could flee
while leaving behind them all their treasures and belongings, leaving
even their doors open behind them to the midnight prowlers or thieves
who must surely be about after dark. Or, had those prowlers and
thieves themselves burst open those doors, while neglecting to shut
them again after they had glutted themselves with the treasures
within?
Musing thus he halted, regarding one particularly open house--it was
number 77--then started to see he was not alone in the street.
Coming slowly up it was a man who walked as though with difficulty; a
man who, seeing a solitary woman's body lying on the footpath, crossed
over to her, turned over the body, and regarded the face. Then he
seemed to shake his head and walk on again towards where Walter
Clarges sat his horse observing him. And, far down the street, he saw
also another figure, indistinct as to features, distinct as to dress.
A man arrayed in the garb of a convict; a man who, as he crept along,
gave to the watcher the idea that he was tracking him who was ahead.
Ahead and near Clarges now, so near that he could see his features.
And, as he saw and recognised them, he gave a gasp, while exclaiming
hastily, "My God!"
For the first man of the two, the one who now drew close to him, was
Desparre!