CHAPTER XXII

THE STRICKEN CITY

Whatever effect such musings might have brought forth, even to bloodshed, had Walter Clarges continued to ride close behind the carriage containing his enemy--of which fact he was, in actual truth, profoundly unconscious--cannot be told, since, scarcely had Desparre given way to those musings, than events shaped themselves into so different a form that the idea with regard to the pistols was at once abandoned.

For, ere the summit of the ascent, which was in itself a trifling one, had been reached by both the berceuse and the rider following it, Desparre was surprised--nay, startled--to discover that the man he dreaded so much was not by any possibility tracking him; that the pursuit of him was not his object.

Clarges had ridden past the carriage almost immediately after coming up with it; he had gone on ahead of it--and that rapidly, too--directly after reaching level ground once more.

"Startled" is, indeed, the word most fitting to express the feelings of the man who had but a moment before been quivering with excitement--with nervous fear--within his carriage, not knowing whether his end was close at hand or not. He had felt so sure that the presence of that other, in this region so remote from where they had ever met before, could only be due to the fact that Clarges was in search of and in pursuit of him, that, when he discovered such was not the case, his amazement was extreme. Since, if Clarges sought not him, for whom did he look? Was it the woman who had become his wife? Yet, if so, how did he know that she was, had been, near this spot, even if, by now, already gone far away across the sea whose nearest waters sparkled by this time in the morning sun. For Marseilles was close at hand; another league or so, and Desparre would have reached that city--would know the worst. He would know whether his child had departed to that distant, remote colony, or had died on the roadside ere reaching the city. But his freedom from the presence of that man, of that avenger--even though it might be only momentary--even though the Englishman might only have taken a place in front of the horses instead of riding behind the carriage--enabled him to reflect more calmly now on what the future would probably bring forth when he came into contact with his enemy--as come he must. In those reflections he began to understand that vengeance could scarcely be taken upon him, sinner though he was. Clarges had married the daughter--he could not slay the father. No! not although that father had plotted to slay him--had in truth, nearly slain him by the hands of others. Not although he had himself taken such hideous vengeance on that daughter, not knowing who she was.

But, did the Englishman know all, or, if he were told of what was absolutely the case, would he believe, would----?

A cry, a commotion ahead, broke in upon his meditations, his hopes of personal salvation from a violent death. The carriage stopped with a jerk and he heard sudden and excited talking. What was the reason? Had Clarges suddenly faced round and ordered the coachman to halt ere he proceeded to exercise his vengeance on the master--had he? What could have happened? A moment later, the valet, aroused from his heavy, perhaps guilty, slumbers, had thrust aside the curtain which separated the bed-chamber (for so it was termed) from the fore part of the berceuse, and was standing half in, half out, of the little room, undressed as yet and with a look of agony; almost, indeed, a look of horror, on his features.

"Oh! Monsieur, Monsieur le Duc," he gasped, "there is terrible news. Terrible. We cannot go forward."

"Cannot go forward!" Desparre ejaculated. "Why not? Has that man--that man who passed us endeavoured to stop the carriage?"

"No, Monsieur. No. But--but they flee from the city; in hundreds they flee. There are some outside already, Marseilles is----"

"What?"

"Stricken with the pest. They die like flies; they lie in thousands unburied in the streets. It is death to enter it. Nay, more," and the man shook all over, "it is death to be here."

"My God! Marseilles stricken again. Yet we must go on. We must, I say. Where is that--that cavalier who overtook--rode past us?"

"He has gone on, Monsieur le Duc. He would not be stayed, though warned also. The people, the fugitives--there are a score at the inn a few yards ahead of where we are--warned him to turn back ere too late, and told him it was death to approach the city; that, here even, so near to it, the air is infected, tainted, poisonous! He heeded them not but said his mission was itself one of life or death, and that this news made that mission--his reaching the city at once--even more imperative. Oh! Monsieur le Duc, for God's sake give the orders to turn back."

"Fool, poltroon, be silent So, also, by this news, if it be true, is my reaching the city become more imperative. Where is this crowd, this inn you speak of?"

It was natural he should ask the question, since the bed-chamber of the berceuse had no other window but the little one at the back out of which its occupant could gaze.

"Where," he repeated, "is the crowd--the inn?"

"Close outside, Monsieur; but, oh! in the name of all the Saints, go not forth. It is death! It is death!"

"It is death if I do aught but go on," the Duke muttered to himself; "death to her if she is there and cannot be saved." And, at that moment, Desparre was at his best. Even this man of vile record was dominated by some good angel now.

As he spoke, he pushed the valet aside and, shambling through the still smaller compartment outside the curtain in which the fellow slept and cooked, he appeared on the little platform beneath where the coachman and a footman sat, and from which it was easy by a step to reach the ground.

"What is this I hear of the pestilence at Marseilles?" he asked, as, seeing in front of him an inn before which his carriage was drawn up, as well as a number of strange, sickly-looking beings huddled about in front of it--some lying on wooden benches running alongside tables and some upon the ground--he addressed them. "What? Answer me."

Yet he knew that no answer was required. One glance at those beings told all, especially to him who had once known the pest raging in Catalonia and had seen the ravages it made, and once also at Bordeaux. Those chalk-white faces, those yellow eyes and the great blotches beneath them, were enough. These people might not be absolutely stricken with the pestilence, yet they had almost been so ere they fled.

"We have escaped," one answered, "though it may be only for a time. It is in us. We burn with thirst, shiver with cold. On such a morn as this! Marseilles is lost! Already forty thousand lie dead in her; they pile quicklime on them in the streets to burn them up. At Aix ten thousand are dead--at Toulon ten thousand; thousands more at a hundred other places. Turn back. Turn back, whosoever you are; be warned in time."

"Man," Desparre answered, "we have passed by Aix, yet we are not stricken. I must go on," and his white face blanched even whiter while his eyes rested on those unhappy people. Yet all the same, he did not, would not, falter. He had vowed that his attempt to save his child should act as his redemption if such might be the case; he would never turn back! No, not though the pest awaited him with its fiery poisonous breath at the gates; not even though the Englishman stood before him with his drawn sword ready to be thrust through his heart. He would go on.

He felt positive, something within warned him, that his hour was not far off. And also some strange presentiment seemed to tell him that by, or through, the pest his death was to come--not by the man whom he had himself striven to slay.

Partly he was wrong, partly he was right. An awful penalty awaited him for his misdeeds as well as through his misdeeds, though how the blow was to be struck he had not truly divined.

"Who," he asked, still standing on the platform of his carriage with his richly-embroidered sleeping gown around him, "are there besides the Marseillais? Are--there--any--strangers?"

"Strangers. Nay, nay! Strangers. Bon Dieu! Does Monsieur think strangers seek Marseilles now, when even we, the Marseillais, flee from it? When we leave our houses, our goods, sometimes our own flesh and blood, behind? Who should be there?"

"The commerce is great," he replied. "To all parts of the world go forth ships laden with merchandise. All traffic, all commerce cannot be stopped, even by such a scourge as this!"

"Not stopped!" the man replied. "Monsieur, you do not know. It is impossible that monsieur should understand. There are no ships; they lie out at sea. They will not approach. None, except the galleys. Their cargo counts not."

For a moment the Duke made no reply, while his eyes wandered from that group of fugitives to the people gazing forth from the inn window; to, also, his own servants looking paralysed with fear as they stood about, all having left the berceuse temporarily and crossed to the other side of the road so as not to be too near to the infected ones; then he said:

"There left Paris some weeks ago--many weeks now--two gangs of--of emigrant convicts for--for the New World. One cordon was of men, the other of--of women. Have they, are--are they there in that great pest house?" And he drew in his breath as he awaited the reply.

"The men are there."

"My God!" he whispered.

"They arrived yesterday."

"Have they sailed--put to sea? For New France?"

"I know not. There are, I tell monsieur, no ships. Those which were to transport those gallows' birds would not perhaps come in. They may have gone elsewhere."

"And the women?"

"I know not. If they are there, they will work in the streets--the men at burning and burying. The women at nursing."

"Have many persons there succumbed?"

"Many! Of those in the town almost half; at least a half."

Desparre asked no more questions but turned away, shaking at that last reply. Yet a moment later he returned to where the fugitives were (he was so white now that one whispered to another that already he was "struck"), took from his pocket a purse, and, shaking from it several gold pieces into his hand, held them out towards the poor creatures. Yet, even as he did so, he paused a moment, saying:

"Nay, do not come for them--there!" And he threw the coins towards where the people were huddled together.

For a moment they seemed astonished, even though he muttered, "Doubtless they will be of assistance," and he noticed that only one man in the small crowd picked them up--he with whom he had first conversed. But he saw a man whose head was out of the window smile, if the look upon his wretched face could be called by that name, whereby he was led to believe that the man who had last spoken was some rich merchant flying from the stricken city, even as the poorest and most humble fled. He understood that wealth made no difference in such a case as this.

He gave now the orders to proceed towards Marseilles, bidding his coachman and footman resume their places on the box, and his valet re-enter the berceuse. Instead, however, of doing so, they remained standing stolidly upon the farther side of the road muttering to themselves, shaking their heads, and looking into each other's eyes, as though seeking for support in their disobedience.

At last the coachman spoke, saying:

"Monsieur le Duc, we cannot go on. We--we dare not. This is no duty of ours--to risk our lives in this manner. No wages could repay us for doing that."

"You must go on," Desparre said; "you must conduct me to the gates of Marseilles. Beyond that, I demand no more. It is but two leagues. If I were not sick and ailing I would dismiss you here and walk into the city by myself. As it is, you must finish the journey. If not----"

"If not--what?" demanded the footman, speaking in an almost insolent tone. "What, Monsieur le Duc? These are not feudal days; there is no law here. All law is at an end, it seems; and--and, if it were not, no law ever made can compel us to meet death in this manner."

For a moment Desparre looked at the man, his eyes glistening from his pallid, sickly face; then he turned and slowly entered the berceuse. A moment later he reappeared upon the platform, and now he held within his hands his pistols. He was, however, too late. Whether the men had divined what he had intended to do and how he meant to coerce them, or whether they recognised that here was their chance--which might be their last one--of escaping from the horrible prospect of death that lay before them, at least they were gone, They had fled away the moment his back was turned, and had disappeared into a copse lying some distance from the road.

There remained, however, as Desparre supposed, Lolive; yet he recollected that he had been in neither of the compartments as he entered them. In an instant he understood that the man was gone too. The fellow had slid into the inn while his master had been inside the berceuse, and, passing swiftly through it to the back, had thereby made his own escape also.

Desparre would, in days not so long since past, have given way to some tempestuous gust of rage at this abandonment of him by his domestics, creatures who had been well paid and fed, even pampered, since they had been in his service and since he had come to affluence--he would have endeavoured to find them, and, had he done so, have shot them there and then. Yet now, either because he was a changed man in his disposition, or because his physical infirmities were so great, he did nothing beyond letting his glance rest upon the people standing about who had been witnesses of the desertion. Then, at last, he addressed them, haltingly--as he ever spoke now--his words coming with labour from between his lips.

"I am," he said, "a rich man. And--and--there is one in Marseilles dear to me, one whom I must save if I can. She is," the pause was very long here, "my daughter, and--heretofore--I have treated her evilly. I--must--see her if she be still alive; I must see her. If any here will drive my carriage to Marseilles he may demand of me what he will. Otherwise, I, feeble, sick, as I am, must do it myself. Even though I fall dead from the box to the ground in the attempt."

For a moment none spoke. None! not even those who, a short time back, would have performed so slight a task for a crown and have been glad to do it. Not one, though now, doubtless, a hundred pistoles would be forthcoming if asked from a man who travelled in so luxurious a manner. They knew what was in that city; they had had awful experience of the poisonous, infected breath that was mowing down thousands weekly, and, though some in the little crowd were of the poorest of the population, they did not stir to earn a golden reward. Gold, precious as it was, fell to insignificance before the preservation of their lives, squalid though such lives were even at the best of times.

A silence fell upon all; there was not one volunteer, not one who, meeting Desparre's imploring glance as it roved over them, responded to that glance. Then, suddenly, the man who had conversed with Desparre when last he appeared on the platform, the one who had taken no notice of the coins the latter tossed out in his sudden fit of charity, came forward and took in his hands the reins lying on the backs of the horses, and began to mount to the deserted box.

"I will drive you to the gates," he said quietly, "since your misery is so extreme. Yet, in God's grace, it must be less than mine. You may find this daughter of whom you speak alive even now--but for me--God two of mine are gone. I shall never see them again. As for your money, I need it not. I would have given a whole fleet of ships, a hundred thousand louis--I could have done it very well and not felt the loss--to have saved my children's lives. Oh! my children! My children! My children!" and, as he shook the reins, he wept piteously.