CHAPTER XXVIII

THE WALLED-UP DOORS

Marion Lascelles had hoped, had prayed that this moment would come at last; that at some future day Laure's husband would stand face to face with his wife again; that he would seek her out and find her even though, to do so, he had to follow La Châine to the New World.

But now--now that what she had hoped for had come to pass, there almost swept a revulsion of feeling over her. Standing before that husband of the woman whom she had tended and nurtured, she smothered within her bosom something that was akin to a groan. For his coming brought, would bring, in an hour, in half-an-hour, in a few moments, the joy unspeakable to Laure for which she had so much craved, while to her--to Marion--the outcast, it brought also separation from the only thing in all the wide world that she loved or could ever love again. She had been racked by her love for men who had treated her badly and on whom she had taken swift, unerring vengeance for their infidelity; yet that was passed. Her heart had died, or, if not dead, had steeled itself against all other love of a like nature (since the condemned man whom she had married in the prison had been only accepted as a husband because, in the distant land to which they had been going together, such a union would be a matter of convenience and profit, as well as, perhaps, safety). Yet into that heart had crept another love, pure, unselfish, almost holy. Her love for Laure. And now--now it would be worthless, valueless, of no esteem. At what price would her fostering, her sister's love be valued when set off against the love of husband?

Had she been a bad woman instead of an erring one only, a woman resolved to attach to her for ever the one creature with whose existence her own was, as she had vainly dreamed, inseparably bound up; had she been the Marion Lascelles of ten, five, perhaps one year ago, it may be--she feared it must have been--that she would have lied to Walter Clarges standing there before her, his sad face irradiated now, since she had not lied, with joy extreme. She would perhaps have denied Laure's existence, have said that she had long since fallen dead upon one of the roads along which she and the other women had plodded weary and footsore; she would have done anything to have kept the girl to herself. But not now. Not now. Not even though her heart broke within her. Never! She loved Laure. Perish, therefore, all her own feelings, her hopes of happy days to come and to be passed by the other's side. She loved her; it was not by falsehood and treachery and selfishness that that love must be testified.

"I cannot leave this work to which I am put," she said, speaking to him as these thoughts continued to flow through her mind. "I have to earn remission of the remainder of my sentence. Pardon for--for myself. Yet, if you would see her now, she is to be found in the Rue de la Bourse. The number is 3. Upon the first floor in the front room you will find her."

She spoke calmly, almost hardly, Walter Clarges thought, and, thus thinking, deemed her a cold-hearted, selfish woman, studying nought but her own release and the swiftest method of obtaining it. Wherefore he said:

"You know her. You must have marched in the same cordon with her."

"Yes, I know her."

"How can she have borne the terrors of the journey? How? How?"

"All had to bear it," Marion Lascelles answered, glancing up at him, "or die."

"This house?" he asked, while almost shuddering at the cold, indifferent tones in which the woman spoke, even while reflecting that, since she had borne as much as Laure had done, it was not to be expected that she should show any particular sympathy for a companion in misfortune. "This house? Can admission be obtained to it? And why is she there, when--when her companions in misery and unhappiness are here?"

"This key," Marion said, drawing it from her pocket, "will admit you. She is alone, sleeping. She is not as strong as some of us--us, the outcasts, who are the rightful prey of the galleys and the scaffold. Mercy has been shown her. She has been relieved from her work in these streets to-day."

He took the key from her as she held it out to him, glancing at her wonderingly as he did so, though understanding nothing of the cause which produced her bitterness of tone--her self-contempt, as testified by her speech. Then, thanking her, he repeated:

"No. 3, of the Rue de la Bourse. That is it?"

"That is it. You will find her there." After which she turned away and slowly followed after the cart proceeding up the street with its terrible burdens.

If Marion Lascelles had never before wrestled with all the strong emotions which were born of her fiery nature day by day, and month by month, she had done so this morning, was doing so now. And at last--at last--she thanked God the better had overcome the worse--she had conquered. None knew but herself, none should ever know, what hopes she had formed in her bosom of happy days to come when she and the delicate girl, whom she had supported all through the hideous journey from Paris, and during their still more hideous entry into this stricken city of death, should have escaped away to some spot where they might at last be at peace. She had pictured to herself how she would work and slave for Laure so that she should be at ease; how work her fingers to the bone, bear any toil, so that--only that--she might have the sweet companionship of the girl as recompense. And now--now--the dream had vanished, the hope was past; they could never be aught to each other. The husband was there, he had come to claim his wife, as she herself had told Laure he would come; now he would be all in all to her and she would be nothing. Yet she must not repine; the prayers that she had forced herself to utter, almost without knowing how to frame them, had been heard and answered. The God against whom her life had been so long an outrage had granted her the first request she had ever made to Him. Was it for her now to rebel against the granting of it? Nay, nay, she answered to herself, never. And, even in her misery and her awful sense of desolation, in her appreciation of the solitude that must be hers for ever now, she found a consolation. She had done that which she should do; she had sent the husband straight to his wife's arms when she might so easily have prevented him from even discovering that wife's existence. One lie, one false hint, one word uttered to the effect that Laure had succumbed upon the road and had been left behind for the communes to bury her, and it would have been enough. She would have remained to Marion; the husband could never have found her--he could never find her. No, no! God be praised! she had been true and faithful; she had not yielded to her own selfish hopes and desires.

"Take," said a soft and gentle voice in her ear at this moment; the voice of the unhappy Sheriff who accompanied the carts that were removing the dead, "take, good woman, more heed of yourself and your own life. See, the cloth with the disinfectants has fallen from your neck--it is lost. Beware of what you do. Otherwise you will be stricken ere long yourself."

Turning, she glanced up at the speaker, then shrugged her shoulders and went on with the loathsome task she was engaged upon--that of bending over prostrate bodies to see if their owners were, indeed, dead or not, and, if the latter, of assisting in their removal to the carts. But that was all, she uttered no word in answer to the warning.

"You do not value your life?" the man continued, while thinking how fine a woman this was; one so darkly handsome too, that, surely, she must have some who loved her, criminal though she must undoubtedly be since she had formed one of the chain-gang.

"No," she answered, looking up at him now. "I do not value it. Yet, they say, 'tis to such as I am that death never comes."

"But, ere long, if you survive this visitation, you may--you shall--be free. I will charge myself with your freedom."

"Free!" she answered, her eyes fixed on him with so sad a look that, instinctively, he turned away. There was something in this woman's life, he understood, which it was not for him to attempt to probe.

Left in peace by the Sheriff, Marion continued her work, following close by the cart; yet bidding the man who led the horse to halt at intervals wherever she found some poor body with distorted features which told only too plainly that the last agony had been experienced; halting herself sometimes to be of assistance to those who were still alive. But always saying over and over again the words, "Free! Free!"

Free! Of what use was freedom now to her? What! Supposing she were free to-night, to-morrow, what should she do with that freedom? Laure wanted her no more, she would not miss her if she never went back to the Rue de la Bourse; she had her husband now, the man whom, she acknowledged, she had learned to love. Therefore, Marion resolved that she would never go back. Never! Of that she was determined. She would but be an incubus, be only in the way of their love. She would never go back. Not even if the pestilence spared her, which, she hoped, it might not do.

They had come by now to the street of the Barefooted Carmelites--a street in which she perceived that there were no dead--or, only one, a woman lying on one side of it. And here, strong as she was, she felt that she must rest. Her limbs trembled beneath her--from fatigue and want of sufficient nourishment, she thought, not daring to hope that already the fever had stolen into her veins and that a better, surer freedom than the one the Sheriff had suggested might be near at hand. He, that Sheriff, had left them by now to attend to other duties in the city, therefore there was at this time no living person with her but the carman, who, with his ghastly burdens in his cart, walked ahead of her.

"I must rest here," she said to him, "a little while. See, there is a fountain in the street. We will drink," and she went towards the fountain, which was represented by a statue of Cybele, from out of whose bunch of keys the water gushed in half a dozen streams.

"Drink not," the carman exclaimed, warningly. "They say the source is impregnated. All the water of Marseilles is poisonous now. Beware!"

"Bah! It must come from the bowels of the earth. There are no infected bodies there. And," she muttered to herself, "even though there were I still would drink." Whereon she drank, then sat down on the base of the statue, which was large and spacious and would have furnished a dozen persons with seats.

Presently, still sitting there--she saw come down the street a number of men, some of them galley slaves, two of them officers. Then, when all had advanced almost to where Marion sat observing them, one of the latter drew from his pocket a list and began to read out several names, while giving the convicts instructions as to what each had to do. But what truly surprised Marion was that, behind all these men there came some others leading the horses which drew two carts--carts not filled with dead, but the one with mortar and the other with bricks.

Gazing at these, and almost with interest for one whose mind was as troubled as hers, she perceived that, of the galley slaves, one had drawn away from the group, and, approaching the base of the fountain, had sat down upon it near her and on the other side from that on which the carman whom she had accompanied was sitting. An old criminal this; a man of nearly sixty, grey and grizzled, and with a frosty bristling on his unshaven chin and cheeks and upper lip. A man who sat with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, staring in front of him--at a house numbered 77.

"What do they do?" Marion asked of this staring man, while looking round at him and noticing how worn and white he was, "and why are these carts piled with bricks and mortar? What is it?"

"They brick up the houses that are infected; those in which the dead lie. Those that are the worst."

"But--but--supposing there should be any living left in them. See, they have commenced there, at 76, and without entering to make inspection. That would be even more terrible than all else."

"The inspection has been made. The houses are marked already. Observe, there is a chalk mark. Regard No. 76, at which the masons work."

"By whom has the inspection been made?"

"By me and another," the convict answered, turning his white and ghastly face on her. "Three hours ago, this morning. At daybreak."

"All are not marked."

"No, all are not marked. Not--yet!" Ere she could, however, ask more, one of the officers strode towards where they sat near together, and, addressing the convict, who sprang respectfully to his feet, said:

"Have you thought, remembered yet, which is the house you had forgotten. Idiot that you are! to have thus forgotten. Reflect again. Recall the house. Otherwise we shall brick up one in which there are no dead to be left to decay in it."

"I think--I think," the other answered--white and almost shivering, as Marion, who was watching him curiously, observed, "it is that," and he pointed to No. 77.

"You think! Yet are not positive? Go in again and see. Make sure this time. Go."

Slowly the man obeyed him, walking over to the door of No. 77, and then, after turning the handle, entering. And, while he was gone, the masons went on with the bricking up of one or other of the houses which bore the chalk-marked cross beneath their numbers.

Five minutes later the convict appeared again at the door and said, loud enough for his voice to reach the officer's ears and also to reach Marion's:

"This, Monsieur, is the house," while, as he spoke, his left hand went to the pocket of his filthy galley's dress.

"You are sure?"

"I am--sure!"

"Mark it."

Therefore, in obedience to the order, the man drew forth a piece of chalk from his pocket, and slowly marked the cross beneath the number 77. "Now," said the officer, seeing that the masons were ready to begin upon that house, "fall in and lend assistance." Half-an-hour later it was done, finished. Not for a year would that house be opened again. By which time those who were in it--if any--would be skeletons.