CHAPTER XXVII

"I LOVE HER!-SHE IS MY WIFE"

Down the Rue de la Bourse, wherein the women of la Châine had passed the latter part of the night, the rays of the sun began to stream horizontally as it rose far away over the Mediterranean and lit up the side of the street in which stood the house where the weary creatures lay.

A month before this period daybreak would have dawned upon a vastly different scene from the one of lifeless desolation to which it now brought light and warmth. The great warehouses at the back of the merchants' residences--in which position most of those buildings in Marseilles were situated--would have already begun to teem with human life; with bands of sailors coming up from the harbour, either bringing, or with the intention of carrying away, bales of goods and merchandise; workmen, mechanics, clerks, and _employés_ of every kind would have been passing up the street to their early work. Now, the Rue de la Bourse, like scores of other streets in the City, was absolutely deserted or only tenanted at various spots by the dead--human and animal!--who lay about where they had fallen--on doorsteps, in porches and stoops, sometimes even in the very middle of the road.

On such a scene as this Marion gazed as she looked forth from the room she and Laure had slept in; her mind full of sorrow and perplexity--not for herself nor on her own account, but on that of the other unhappy one over whom she watched. For herself she cared not--she knew that her past, and the consequences resulting from the actions of that past, had shut the door for ever against any sweetness of existence for her in the future, nor was she much concerned as to whether the pestilence slew her or not. Only--she had sworn to stand by Laure until the end; therefore she knew that now, at this present time and for some weeks or months at least, she must live, she must take care of her own health if she would do what she had vowed to perform. Afterwards, if she should see Laure spared by the hideous scourge which now ravaged the place they had arrived at, spared to be in some manner restored to the husband she had come at last to love--then it mattered little what became of her. But she must live to see that!

Marion went over to the girl now and once more gazed at her, observing that she was sleeping calmly and easily; then she returned to the window and continued her glances up and down the street. She was watching for those who, as the convict had said, would come for them soon after daybreak to lead them away to where their services would be needed as nurses and helpers, and she wished to be on the alert to prevent them from troubling Laure. She meant at once to tell them--her teeming brain never being at a loss for an expedient!--that the girl was ill or, at least, too weak to take any part in the proceedings for which they might all be required on that day, and to beg her off. She determined also that, whether the request was granted cheerfully or not, Laure should rest for the next twenty-four hours. Her confidence in her own powers and strength failed her no more now than they had ever failed her in the most violent crises of her life--she was resolved that what she desired should be accomplished.

Presently she saw them coming--or, rather, saw coming up the street a band of men and women who, she could not doubt, were a party of nurses and "crows," as the males were termed who attended to the work of removing the dead and, if possible, to the disposing of them elsewhere, namely, in the vaults of churches, the hollow walls of the ramparts, and, in some cases, in old boats and decayed vessels which were taken out to sea and there sunk. Whereon she went swiftly down the stairs to the door to meet them.

Among this body of persons which now drew near she saw her acquaintance of last night, the convict, who at once greeted her in his strong Breton accent, he being, as he had told her at their first meeting, a native of that province.

"Bon jour, Madame," he now cried with an attempt at cheerfulness,--poor wretch! he had made some sort of compact with himself that nothing should depress him, nor any horrors by which he was surrounded frighten him, while forcing himself to regard his impending liberty as a certainty which no pestilence must be allowed to deprive him of. "Bon jour, Madame. And how is the young one?"

"She is not well," Marion answered, while glad, in a way, that she so soon had an opportunity given her of declaring that Laure could not go nursing that day; "also, she must rest." Then she regarded the members of the group accompanying the man, while observing who and what they were.

Two were monks; good, holy men, who, working cheerfully under the orders of the bishop (as dozens of their brethren were doing in other parts of Marseilles) were now acting as doctors, since--horrible to relate--there was not one physician or surgeon now left either alive or unstricken. In the beginning of the pestilence, the doctors of Marseilles had scoffed at the disease being the plague; they had called it nothing but a trifling malady, and, unhappily both for them and all in the city, they had suffered for their obstinacy or, rather, incredulity. They had been amongst the very first to break down under the attacks of the loathsome fever which they had refused to recognise. Consequently, the work which they should still have been able to do had to be done by amateurs--such as these monks--or the surgeons of the galleys, or any stranger in the city who understood medicine and its uses, and was willing to risk his life in administering it.

Of the others who formed the group some were "crows," as has been said, while there were five women, three of them being under sentence for life at the travaux forcés, yet now with a fair prospect of freedom before them should they perform faithfully all that was demanded of them at this awful crisis, and--also--preserve their lives! Of the other two, one was an elderly lady whose whole existence had been devoted to good works, she even having voyaged as far as Siam with the missionaries sent out there; the second was a young and beautiful woman of high position among the merchant families of the place, who had broken her father's heart by her loose conduct and was now endeavouring to soothe her own remorse by self-sacrifice.

There was also a Sheriff--not the same as he who had accosted La Châine overnight--but another one, older than the former, and seeming also much grief-stricken.

"If," said this man, addressing Marion, "the young woman of whom you speak is indeed ill, let her rest; later, she may be able to be of assistance. God forbid we should do aught to add to the sickness here. She is not attacked with the pestilence?" he asked.

"Nay," said Marion. "Nay. But she is young and delicate. She is a lady. Think, monsieur, of what she must have gone through in the past few months. We others are mostly rough creatures, especially those who have survived, since the loose women, the dissolute ones who set out with us have--well--been left behind. But--but----"

"What was her crime? That of your friend? For what was she condemned?"

"She was an innocent woman!" cried Marion; and as she spoke her lustrous eyes blazed into the man's before her. "God crush for ever the scoundrel who bore false witness against her."

"There are other women in the house," the Sheriff said, almost unheeding Marion's tempestuous outburst. "They at least can work, can they not?"

"Oh! as for that," Marion answered, "I imagine so. I will go in and see. Yes," she exclaimed, glancing up at a window in the house above the room in which she and Laure had slept, she being now in the street and amidst the group, "it would seem so. Behold, they look forth."

It was true that they did so, since, when all eyes were directed upwards, the unkempt heads of the other surviving members of the gang--heads covered in some cases with black hair, in some with yellow, and, in one, with grey--were seen peering down into the street.

"_Hola!_" cried Marion, "come down all of you. Come down and assist at the good work. You have slept well, have you not?"

"Ay, we have slept. But now we are hungry. We want food. We cannot work on empty stomachs; if we do the pest will seize on us."

"Descend," cried the Sheriff, "we bring food with us. For to-day," he muttered to himself, turning aside his head. "To-morrow there may be none. Already the country people will not enter the city nor take what they deem to be our poisoned money. God help all!"

As he so muttered to himself he made a sign to one of the men who carried a great copper pot, and to one of the condemned women who bore in her hands a tin box, and bade them prepare some food, the man lighting at his bidding a little brazier at the bottom of the big pot. At the same time the female produced from her box some hard ship's biscuits, and began, with a stone she picked up, to break them into pieces.

By this time the other women had come down into the street, and, inhaling the odour of the soup which was warming in the utensil, betrayed intense desire to be at once supplied with some nourishment.

"A half cup to each," said the Sheriff, "and some biscuits. Later, you shall have more. A warehouse is to be broken open at midday; it is that of a merchant who supplies vessels with necessaries for long voyages. God grant that we shall find enough for many days. Otherwise, starvation will soon be added to our other miseries. Already seventy such warehouses have been ransacked."

Obtaining a portion of soup and another of biscuit, Marion went back to the house to Laure, though not before she had filled up the other cup with her own share of soup, reserving only a scrap of the food for herself; and, when there, she found the girl sitting up upon the couch listening to the voices of those in the street.

"Have they come for us?" Laure asked wearily. "Must we now begin to work? Well, so be it! I am ready."

"Nay, dearest," exclaimed the other. "You need not go forth to-day. I have begged you off, because you are so worn and delicate. And see, sweet, they are serving out food. Here is some good broth and biscuit. Take it; it will nourish you."

"But it is not right," Laure exclaimed, "that I should stay behind. They--you, too, Marion, my guide and comforter--are all as weary as I. I will go also."

"No; no. Rest here till we come back. Then, to-morrow, if you are stronger, you shall assist. Nay, you must do so if you can; thereby the better to entitle you to your freedom. Oh! Laure, we must work for that freedom. Then--at last--we can go away and live together, and I can earn subsistence for both. Until we find your husband."

"You are in truth an angel, Marion," the girl exclaimed, flinging her arms around the other's dark swarthy neck. "Oh! how--how could one as good as you have ever come within the law's clutches. How----"

"Hush! Hush! I have been an awful sinner; I have deserved my fate, I have been swayed and mastered by one passion after another--by love, jealousy, hate, revenge. God forgive me! We southern women are all like that! Yet--if I should live----"

"If you live! You shall, you must live! Oh! Marion, my guide, my sister----"

"Ah, your sister! Yes! Say that again. Yet," she cried, springing to her feet, "not now! Now we have to earn the freedom we long so for. I must go; I must do my best and work for both of us. Ah, God! how good it is, how peaceful, to be doing something at last, no matter if danger lurks in it, that is not evil. Let me go, sweet. I shall come back to you at night; therefore sleep well all day. And, see, I will lock you in the house so that no harm may come anigh you. You will not fear?"

"Never; knowing you are coming back to me."

Then they tore themselves apart, Marion taking every opportunity of leaving Laure as comfortable as was possible, which opportunity was not lacking since the room was, as has been said, furnished luxuriously, and nothing was wanting that might make the couch of the wearied girl an easy one. And so, after more embraces between them, Marion went forth once more, falling in with the rest of the women and following the Sheriff and the convict and the "crows," to do the work they might be appointed to perform.

The bravest heart that ever beat--even her own, since there was none braver!--might well be turned almost to stone by that which they had to do; the sights they were forced to witness. And the daylight made those sights even more terrible and more appalling than the night had done, which, if it produced a weird and wizard air of solemnity that spread itself around all the terrors of the pestilence, had; at least, served also as a cloak to much. For now they saw the dead lying in heaps upon each other--with, among them, the dying; they saw the awful chalk-like faces turned up to the bright morning sun in the last agonised glare of a hideous death, and the still whiter eye-balls gleaming hideously. They saw, too--but description of these horrors must cease. Suffice it that these women stood among a hecatomb of victims such as other stricken cities had shown in earlier days, but which none, not even London with its plague, had equalled for more than a hundred years.

Gradually the women of the gang were distributed about in various spots where it was thought they might be of service; to some fell the task of holding cups of broth or of water to the lips of the dying; to some the casting of disinfectants over the already dead; to others the removal of newborn babes from the pestiferous atmosphere in which their mothers lay. And Marion's task, because she was strong and feared nothing, was to assist in the removal of the dead to the carts that were to transport the bodies to the ramparts, in the hollows of which many scores were to be interred in quicklime.

Engaged thus, she observed near her a gentleman--a man clad in black, as one who wore mourning for a relative; a man young, handsome and grave. One, too, whose face was white and careworn as though it had become so through some poignant grief. He was talking to one of the "crows" as her eyes fell on him, and--with an astonishment in her mind which, she noticed, was not all an astonishment, but rather an indistinct feeling that gradually merged itself into something that she seemed to feel, did not partake altogether of the unexpected--she observed that both men were regarding her. They were doing so, she understood, by the glances cast at her by the "crow," and followed by others from the stranger talking of her. Why, she asked herself, why? Yet even as she did so, something within again apprised her, whispered to her, that it was not strange they should be doing so. Then, with the habit of years strong upon her, she cast one penetrating glance at the new-comer from out of her dark eyes, and went on with the loathsome work she was engaged upon.

Presently, however, she felt that the man clad in mourning had drawn near to her--she knew it though she had looked round no more: a moment later she heard him addressing her.

"You will pardon me," he whispered, "for what I have to say. But--but--that unhappy creature with whom I have been conversing has told me that--you--alas! that I must say it--have recently made a journey from Paris. That you are----"

"A convicted woman," Marion replied swiftly, facing round on him, her eyes ablaze; "a criminal! One of the women condemned to deportation to the colonies. Well, he has spoken the truth. What then?"

"Forgive me. I speak not with a view to wound you, or to be offensive. But, God help me, I seek one dear to me. An innocent woman condemned to the same penance as you, and by one who is a double damned scoundrel. She was of your chain. And--heaven pity us both, I love her--she is my--wife."

"Your wife!" Marion repeated, standing before him, gazing full into his eyes, holding still in her hand the white leprous-looking hand of a dead woman whose body she had been helping to place in the cart. "Your wife." And now her voice had sunk to as deep a murmur as it had ever assumed, even in the softest moments of her bygone days of love and passion. "Your wife. Amongst us?"

"It is so. Oh, speak; answer me. Is--is--yet almost I fear to ask. Still--still I must do it. Is she still alive?"

"What?"--mastering herself, speaking firmly, though hoarsely--"What is your name?"

"Walter Clarges. I am an Englishman."

"Laure's husband! Laure's husband!"

"You know her! You know--ah! does she live?"

"Yes. She lives."

"God! I thank thee!" the other murmured.