CHAPTER XXV

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!