CHAPTER XXIX

Oh! let me be awake, Or let me sleep alway.

Left alone by Marion's departure, Laure endeavoured to sleep once more and to obtain some return of the strength that she had lost in that long, horrible march which she, in common with all the other women, had been forced to make from Paris.

"If I could only sleep again," she murmured to herself, "sleep and forget everything. Everything!"

Yet, because, perhaps, the early morning sun streamed so brightly through the handsome curtains of the windows in spite of their having been drawn carefully together by Marion ere she went forth, or because the sparrows twittered so continuously from the eaves--the pestilence brought neither death nor misery to them!--she could sleep no more. Instead, she could only toss and turn upon the luxurious couch on which she had lain all night, wondering, as she did so, if the unhappy owner and his family who had fled affrighted from all their wealth and sumptuous surroundings had now as soft a one whereon to rest--wondering, too, what was to be the end of it all.

"As for him," she murmured, for her thoughts dwelt always, hour by hour and day after day, upon the man who had sacrificed his existence--his life for her, perhaps--if Desparre had spoken truly; "as for him--oh, God!" she broke off, "if I could only see him once again. Only once! To tell him how soon I had surrendered, how he had conquered, even as he stood before me sad and unhappy on his own hearth. To see him only once!"

Again she turned upon her pillows and cushions, again attempted to sleep; but it was in vain. She was neither nervous nor alarmed at being alone in the great, desolate house; since what had she, this worn, emaciated outcast to fear!--therefore she thought that it must be owing to her heavy slumber of the past night that she was now wide awake. Or owing, perhaps, to her thoughts of him.

"If he were not slain," she pondered now while lying there, her eyes open and staring at the richly painted and moulded ceiling of the vast saloon, "he may be by this time in that land to which he was going. And he will think, must think, that I fled from him the moment he had left his house. Even though I should go on in the transports to the same place wherein he is, and we might meet, he would cast me off, discard me as one who is worthless."

Why had she not spoken on that night, she mused? Why? Why? Had she said but one word, had she but held out some promise that, in time, her love would grow, he would have stayed by her side, would never have left the house. And, thus, there would have been no danger of his being slain, if slain he was; nor could that crawling snake, Desparre, have made his way to the house to which Walter had taken her, nor, having done so, would he have been able to effect any harm.

"Slain! Slain!" she continued, musing, "slain! Yet some voice whispers in my ears that it was not so, that Marion is right. That he is alive. Still, even so, what can that profit me; how help me to put aside my misery and despair? Alive! he would deem himself lawfully free of me by my desertion, free to become another woman's lover--or husband--free to whisper the words in her ears that he whispered once in mine, to see his and her children grow up at his knee."

Excitedly she sprang from the couch and paced the floor, her thoughts beyond endurance.

"No! no no!" she gasped again and again. A dozen times she cried out, "No," in her despair. "Not that, not that! I loved you, Walter," she murmured, "I loved you. If never before, then, at least, on the morning when you risked everything in the world to obtain my freedom from that fiend incarnate, when you led me through the garden, stood at the altar by my side, made me your wife. Then, then, I loved you, worshipped you. I cannot bear these thoughts, I cannot bear to deem you another's. Oh, Walter! Walter!"

Soon, however, she became more calm; she recalled what she was now. An outcast, a woman condemned to deportation; in truth, a convict, and none the less so because, through one strange and awful circumstance, it was almost certain that the exile to which she had been doomed would never now be borne by her or her companion.

She became sufficiently calm now to speculate, while she paced the floor of the vast room, as to what her and Marion's future would be if spent together as both hoped; as to what poverty and struggles both would have to contend with. Of how, too, they would grow older and older together, until at last the parting came--that awful moment when, of two who love each other dearly, one has to go while leaving the other behind, stricken and prostrate.

But, suddenly, these meditations were broken in upon; to them succeeded a more bodily fear, a terror of some tangible danger near at hand.

She had heard a grating sound in the passage beneath, a sound that she recognised at once in the hollow emptiness of the house to be that of a large key turning in a lock; she heard next the hall door pushed opened and a man's step below. What was it? Who could be coming? Perhaps the _galérien_ of the night before who had escorted them to this place, the man whose familiarities had been sternly repressed by Marion. If so, what could he want? How could he have become possessed of the key which Marion had at the last moment said should never quit her possession until she returned in the evening? Yet, as she heard the man's footfall below, while recognising as she did so that he was entering each of the rooms on the lower floor one after the other, she was able to calm her trepidation by reflecting that, whatever purpose he might be there for, it could scarcely bode harm to her. What had she--a beggar, clad in the rags of the galleys, with no remnants of beauty, scarcely any of womanhood, left in her sunbaked, emaciated face--to fear? What had she to tempt any man with, even if he were the most ferocious and hardened of his sex. Then she heard the steps of the intruder coming up the stairs. To this floor on which she was! Well, she feared nothing; she would go forth and encounter him, whosoever he might be, instead of locking herself in the saloon as a moment ago she had thought of doing.

He might be bringing some message from Marion, some news she ought to know. But, suddenly, her heart almost stopped beating. What if her one friend in all the wide world, her one support and comfort, should be stricken already! She must go forth on to the landing and learn what the entry of this man into the house might portend. Reaching the head of the stairs, looking down at him who was ascending, she knew that, at least, this was no knavish galley-slave who mounted slowly towards where she was; no thief, nor, did it seem likely, anyone who had been sent with a message to her from Marion. More like, she thought, it was the owner of this great, luxurious house. She could not see the man's face as he ascended, since it was hidden by his three-cornered hat, yet she observed that the rich mourning he wore--doubtless for some of his family who had fallen victims to the pest--was, although smirched and travel-stained, of the best. The black satin coat, the lace of his cravat and ruffles, the costly sword, were those of one such as the master of this house might be.

Then the man looked up, and their eyes met.

And, even as they did so, even as she clasped her breast with both her hands, drawing back with a gasp, she knew, she understood, that her husband had not recognised her! If, in her aching heart, there had ever arisen any doubt of the ravages which her sufferings and tribulation had caused to her beauty, that doubt was dispelled now; it existed no longer. She was so changed that her own husband did not know her!

But still he came on, step by step, up those stairs. On and up until they stood face to face.

Then he knew her!

And, with a loud cry, he strode forward. A moment later his arms were around her, her head was upon his breast.

"My wife! My wife!" he cried, "ah, my wife! Thank God, I have found you."

* * * * * *

Whatever havoc those sufferings and tribulations might have wrought upon Laure no sign was given by her husband that he perceived them. Instead, as hour after hour went by and still she lay in his arms sobbing in her happiness, she learnt that to him she was as beautiful as in the first hour he had cast his eyes upon her; that, always, even though never more the fair rose and white should return to her complexion, nor the mark left by the hateful carcan become effaced, she would be to him the one woman in all the world. That he had observed that devilish mark, and understood the story it told, she perceived at once, as again and again he kissed the ring upon her neck which the iron had stamped in, while murmuring words of love and deep affection as he did so. But he heeded it no more than he did the sunburn upon her face and throat and breast, the hollowness of her eyes or the emaciation of her frame. All, all of her beauty would come back amidst the pine-scented breezes and mountain air of the land to which he would bear her, while she was surrounded, as she should be, by everything that wealth and happiness could offer.

Wherefore she could only murmur again and again:

"What I feared most of all was that you deemed me heartless and intriguing, that I had used you only as a means to my own end. Walter, my love, my husband, I feared that I was banished from your heart. I feared it even as I recognised that I had loved you from the first."

"That will be," he whispered back, "only when my heart has ceased to beat."

So the day drew on and the sun had left the front of the house; over the street, up which none came, and in which no footfall was heard--over which, indeed, there reigned a silence as of death--the shadows of the evening began to creep, ere they had told each other all. Laure had narrated Desparre's visit to the Rue de la Dauphine, far away in northern Paris, as well as everything that had befallen her since she was cast into prison as a would-be murderess. Walter, too, had told the tale of his misery when he returned to his apartments, his discovery of what had been her fate, his instant departure for this stricken city, and the encounter with Desparre.

"He here!" she had exclaimed, almost affrighted at the thought, in spite of her husband's statement that, even though Desparre should not be struck for death, he still was harmless for further injury, "what could have brought him here? What!"

That Walter could not answer this question is certain; but that he could divine how, in some way, Desparre must have learnt who and what the woman was whom he had condemned to such fiendish punishment, he felt assured. But he had vowed to himself that this fact should never be made known to Laure; she must never learn that it was from her own father's hand that the blow had fallen which consigned her to the horrors of the past months. There was only one man who, if he were still alive, could tell her now--since he was resolved that Desparre should never again stand in her presence, nor be face to face with her--only one, Vandecque. But it was not likely that Laure and he would ever meet again. Had not the beggar, the miserable, shrinking wretch whom he had saved from a beating in Paris, and who had informed him of all, told him, too, that Desparre had made sure of Vandecque and had silenced him for ever? No more was it likely that she and that scoundrel would meet again than that she and Desparre would do so.

In the now swift-coming twilight of the summer evening they heard the voices of women in the street below, and he, looking out inquiringly, learned that they proceeded from her fellow-sufferers who were returning to this house for the night. It was the time at which Marion had told her that, according to what the man who had brought them to this house had said, they would be released from their duties in the streets.

Of Marion herself they had long since spoken when Walter came to that part of his narrative wherein he narrated how he had found Laure out, and had been able to reach her through this woman's assistance; while his wife had described the other as one who had been her saviour and guardian, one to whom she owed the fact that she was still alive.

And again they spoke of her, wondering how soon it would be ere she returned.

"She is an angel of goodness," Laure said, "turbulent as her life has been. Oh, Walter, Walter, I can never part from her. She must stay with me always."

"Always," he answered; "always. If her life can be made happy, I will make it so out of my deep gratitude for all that she has done for you. If she will come with us her happiness shall be for ever assured."

"You will tell her so when she comes back to me? Now, at once, when next she enters this room? You will not let her think, Walter--not for one moment--that--that my new-found happiness shall bring misery in its train for her?"

"At once I will tell her."

As he spoke, the women were coming up the stairs, heavily, dully, gripping the balustrades as they did so; thanking God that, as yet, not one of them seemed to be affected by the horrible contagion they had been amongst. Thanking God, also, that there was another long night of rest before them in which they could sleep soundly.

"Where?" asked Laure, leaving her husband alone in the vast saloon, and going out on the landing as she heard the footsteps of the last woman receding as she mounted to the floor on which the others had slept the night before, "where is Marion? Has she not returned with you all?"

"Nay, I know not," said one, who had also received much help from the strong Southern woman whom they had come to regard as their leader. "I know not. We have all been together, excepting her alone. Is she not back?"

But as she asked the question and before Laure could answer it, another woman who had mounted higher than the other looked over the balustrade rail, and calling down, said:

"She is attending a convict who has been struck; who is, a monk said, doomed. He fell in the Flower Market, writhing. One who was engaged in walling up the doors of the infected houses. I saw her half-an-hour ago."

Then descending a few steps of the stairs, so that now she stood but little above where Laure was, she continued:

"The man wanders in his mind. He told Marion that your husband had come here to seek for you in Marseilles; that he knew him; that he had seen and recognised him."

"My husband has come here!--it is true--and has found me God be praised," while, as she spoke, there was a look of such supreme happiness in her eyes, on her whole face, that the other women could not withdraw their gaze from her. "He has found me. Yet, how can this stricken man, this galley slave, know him?"

"He says he does; and avers that it is so. He says, too, he must see him ere he dies."

Then, because the woman was one who was more righteously sentenced to deportation than most who had toiled in her company from Paris to Marseilles, she having been a thief and a receiver of stolen goods for many years in the Capital, she lowered her voice as she said:

"If he is here, best bid him go see the dying man. He may know of hidden goods, of appropriated treasure securely put away, of wealth easily to be acquired. Tell your husband, if he is in truth his friend, if he has any such a friend----"

"My husband the friend of such as that!" Laure exclaimed. "God forbid! He is an honest man! A gentleman!"

"All our husbands are!" the woman exclaimed with a grimace. "We can all say that! Yet they cannot preserve us from such a fate as this!" and she turned and recommenced the ascent of the stairs.

Relating this to Walter when she returned to the saloon, Laure perceived that the information the woman had given her was surprising to him.

"A dying convict!" he exclaimed, "who knows and recognises me! Impossible. I know none. Yet," he continued, "it may be some man whom I have met in the past. My own countrymen have found their way to the galleys ere now. I will go."

"For God's sake beware of what you do," Laure whispered. "Put yourself in no danger of this infection. Oh! Walter, if--if I lost you now that you have come back to me, my heart would break."