Servants of Sin

"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.

CHAPTER XXIII

WITHIN THE WALLS

Midnight sounded from the tower of the ancient cathedral of Marseilles-the deep tones of the bell, in unison with all the bells of the other churches in the stricken city, being borne across the upland by the soft breeze from off the Mediterranean to where the women of the cordon stood-and those women were free at last from one awful form of suffering. The hateful collar was gone from off their necks; the chains that looped and bound them together had fallen from their wrists under the blows of the convicts, and lay in a mass upon the ground. They could hold up their heads and straighten the backs which had been bowed so long by the weight of the collar; they could stretch their limbs and rejoice-if such women could ever rejoice again at aught! – that they might raise their arms unencumbered by either steel or iron shackles. Yet, around their necks, around their arms, were impressed livid marks that, if they should live, it would take months to efface. More months than it had taken to produce the impression which the things had stamped into their flesh.

Then the order was given by the Sheriff, that broken-hearted man, that they should descend into the city; the very tones in which it was uttered-so different from the harsh, cruel commands of the men who had escorted the forlorn women from Paris! – being almost enough to make compliance with that order easy.

"Come," said Marion Lascelles to Laure, "come, dear one. Even though we march into the jaws of death, at least we go no longer as slaves, but as freed women. Let be. Things might be worse. Had those cowardly dogs, our warders, stayed by our side we should have been whipped or cursed into this nest of pestilence."

So they went on, following their sorrowful guide; the men of the galleys marching near them and relating the awful ravages of the plague which had stricken the city. Yet not without some exclamations of satisfaction issuing from the lips of those outcasts and mingling with their story, since they dilated on the freedom which was now theirs-except at nights when they were re-conducted to the galleys moored by the Quai de Riveneuve; and on, also, the better class of food which-at present! but at present only-they were able to obtain. Upon, too, the almost certain fact of their being entirely pardoned and released when the pestilence should at last be over.

"Will that come to us-if we live?" murmured Laure to the man who walked by the side of her and of Marion. "Will anything we do here, and any dangers to life we encounter, give us our pardon; save us from voyaging to that unknown land?"

"Will it, ma belle!" answered the convict-a brawny, muscular, fellow, who would have been a splendid specimen of humanity but for the fact that he was gaunt and yellow and hideously disfigured by the white cloth steeped in vinegar which he wore swathed round his lower jaw, so that he might continuously inhale the aromatic flavour with each breath he drew. "Will it! Who can doubt it! And, if not, why-name, of a dog! – are we not free already?"

"Free! How?"

"In a manner we are so. What control is there over us-over you, especially? You will live in the streets-or, if you prefer it, in any house you choose to enter; have a care, though, that it is one from which the healthy have fled in fear, not one in which the dead lie poisoning the air. At any moment you can hide yourselves away. While for us-well, there will come a night when we shall not return to the galleys. That is all."

"Has," asked Marion, "a chain of male emigrants entered Marseilles but a few hours before us? They should have done so, seeing that they were not more than a day in advance."

"Yes, yes. They have come. Yet their fortune was different; better or worse than yours, according to how one regards it. One of the merchant ships was still in the port-off the port-a league out to sea, and, well, they risked it. They took the human cargo; they are gone for New France. Had you a man amongst them whom you loved, my black beauty?" he asked, gazing into the dark eyes of Marion, those eyes whose splendour not all she had gone through could dull.

"My husband was amongst them," she replied quietly; while, to herself, she added: "Poor wretch! He did little enough good in marrying me. Yet this leaves me free to devote myself to her."

"Your husband," the convict exclaimed with a laugh. "Your husband? Good! he will never claim you. You can take another if you desire-the first one who falls in love with those superb glances."

"Vagabond! be still," she answered, with such a look from the very eyes he had been praising that the man was silent.

They were by now close to the northern gate of Marseilles; and here for a little while they halted, the Sheriff, whose name was Le Vieux-and who is still remembered there for his acts of mercy and goodness to all-addressing some archers who formed a group outside the gate, and bidding them produce food and wine, as well as some vinegar-steeped cloths for the neck of each woman.

"Who are they?" asked another Sheriff, who came up at this moment, while he scanned the worn and emaciated women and ran his eyes over their dusty and weather-stained clothes. "Surely you are not bringing to our charnel house the refugees from other stricken towns? Not from Toulon and Arles?"

"Nay," replied Le Vieux, "not so. But women who may, by God's grace, be yet of some service to those left alive. If there are any!" he added ominously. Then he asked: "What is the count to-day?"

The other shrugged his shoulders ere he replied:

"There is no count. It is abandoned. Who shall count? The tellers die themselves ere the record is made. Poublanc made a list yesterday-now-"

"He is not dead? My God I he is not dead?" The other nodded his head solemnly. After which he said:

"He lies on his doorstep-dead. He was struck this morning-now-!"

* * * * * *

It was a charnel-house to which the Cordon entered! The second Sheriff had spoken truly!

Yet, at this time, but half of the ninety thousand4 who were to die in Marseilles of this pestilence had achieved their doom. Still, all was bad enough-awful, heart-rending! Not since ten thousand people died daily in Rome, in the first century of the Christian era, had so horrible a blight fallen upon any city. Nor had any city presented so terrible a sight as did Marseilles now when the women entered it, while glancing shudderingly to right and left as they passed along.

The dead lay unburied in the streets where they had fallen-men, women, and children being huddled together in heaps; it seemed even as if, after one heap had lain there for some hours, another had fallen on top of it, so that one might suppose that these second layers of dead represented those who, coming forth to search for their kindred and friends, had in their turn been stricken and fallen over them. There were also the bodies of many dogs lying stretched by the sides of the human victims, it being thought afterwards that they had taken the infection through sniffing at and caressing those who were dear to them. Yet-heart-rending as such a sight as this was to see, and doubly so as the women regarded it, partly under the rays of the moon and partly by aid of the flames of the fires which had been lit to destroy the contagion if possible-there was still worse to be witnessed.

This was the sight of those still left alive.

The women who had once formed the chain of female emigrants, and who, unfettered at last, marched along in company towards a spot where the Sheriff had said they would be able to sleep in peace for the remainder of the night, were now passing down a public promenade which ran for some three hundred yards through the principal part of the city. This promenade was known as Le Cours, and was bordered on each side by trees, mostly acacias and limes, which in summer threw a pleasant shade over the sitters and strollers during the day time, and, in the evening of the same season, had often served as a place for summer evening fetes to be held in, for open-air balmasqués, and as a rendezvous for lovers. Now the picture it presented was frightful!

In its midst there was a fountain with water gushing from the lips of fauns, nymphs, and satyrs into a basin beneath, and at that fountain the moon showed poor stricken men drinking copiously to cool their burning thirst, or leaning over the smooth sides of the basin and holding their extended tongues in the water. Or they lay gasping with their heads against the stone-work, in their endeavours to cool the heat of their throbbing brains, and to still, if might be, the splitting headaches which racked them. For clothes, many had nothing about them but a counterpane snatched hastily from off a bed ere they had rushed forth in agony unspeakable; often, too, when they had left their houses fully dressed, they had torn off their apparel in their inability to bear the warmth imparted by the garments. Yet numbers of them were not poor-if outward signs were sure testimony of wealth. One woman-young, perhaps beautiful, ere stricken by the disfiguring signs of the pest-was resplendent on breast and neck and hands with jewels that glittered in the moonbeams. Doubtless she had seized all she owned ere rushing from her house in misery!

If death levels all, so, too, had the pest in this desolated city plunged into strange companionship persons who, in other days, would never have been brought together. Hard by this bedizened woman was another, a woman of the people-perhaps a beggar, or a work girl, or a washer-woman at the best-who screamed and wailed over a dead babe lying in her lap. At her side was an old man, well clad and handsomely belaced, who shrieked forth offers of pistoles and louis' to any who would ease him of his pain, and then suddenly paused to call to him a dog hard by, to utter endearing words to it, and to endeavour to persuade it to draw near to him and quit the spot on which it lay writhing. A beggar, too! an awful thing of rags and patches! sat gibbering near them, and held out a can into which a monk passing by poured some soup, as he did into many others-yet, no sooner had the man put the stuff to his mouth than he hurled away the can, shrieking that the broth burned him to the vitals.

"This is the end," muttered Marion to herself, her dark eyes roving over all and seeing all as the women passed along-themselves now hideous in their vinegar-steeped wrappings-"the end of our journey!" Then she glanced down, frightened, at Laure, to see if she had heard her words. And she observed that this woman of gentler nature was walking by her side with her eyes closed, while supported and guided only by her own tender arm. The sight was too awful for Laure to gaze upon.

The alley led into a street called La Rue de la Bourse, a broad and stately one, full of large commodious houses such as the merchants of Marseilles had been accustomed to inhabit for some centuries. Now, it was deserted by all living things, while, at the same time, the dead lay in the streets as thick as autumn leaves. Huddled together they lay; some with their faces horribly distorted, some almost placid as though they had died in their sleep, some with their heads broken in! These were the people who had leapt from their windows in a frenzy of delirium or in an agony of pain; or, being dead, had been flung forth from those windows by the convicts and galley-slaves who had been sent into the houses to free them from the poisonous bodies of those who had expired.

Marion noticed, too, that the still living were driven off the thresholds of some houses to which they clung-one man, who looked like the master of the abode, was pouring cold water from a bucket down the steps, so that none would be likely to lie there. And, next, she heard a piteous dialogue between two others.

"It is my own house-my own house!" a man, writhing in a porch close to where she was, gasped to another who parleyed with him from a door open about half a foot. "Oh, my son! my son! let me die here on my own doorstep, if I may not enter."

Then the son answered, his tones being muffled by the aromatic bandages around his face:

"My father, it cannot be. Not because I am cruel to you, but because I must be kind to others still unstruck. Your wife and mine, also myself and my babes, are still free from the fever. Would you slay all, yet with no avail to yourself? My father, think of us," and he shut the door gently on the man while beseeching him once again to begone and to carry the contagion he bore about him far away from the house which contained all that should be dear to him.

"Brute!" cried Marion, hearing all this. "Brute! Animal!"

Then, because of her warm, impetuous Southern nature, she hurled more than one curse up at the window from which she saw the son's white face looking forth by now.

"Nay, nay," murmured the dying old man, while understanding. "Nay, curse him not, good woman. He speaks well. Why should I poison them? And-I am old, very old. I must have died soon in any hap. It matters not."

"There are houses here," whispered the convict, who still walked by Marion's and Laure's side, "at the end of the street, which are, by some marvel, unaffected. Yet, also, they are deserted, because they are so near to the poisoned ones. Seek shelter in one for the night, I counsel you."

"Show me one of such," said Marion. "If there is room enough for all of us," and she indicated with her eyes that she referred to the other women who had marched in company from Paris.

"Follow me, then. There is a house at the end, the mansion of one of our richest merchants. Yet he and all are gone; they have escaped safely in one of his ships to sea. He will not return for months; not until the city is free and purged. 'Twould hold a regiment," he added. Then he led the way down towards the house he spoke of.

"To-morrow," he continued, "the Sheriffs will ask me where you are disposed of, and I must say, since you will be required to lend aid. Meanwhile, sleep well, all you women. Above all, when you are in, shut fast every window so that no air enters the house to infect it. Forget not."

"Be sure I will remember," Marion replied. "As well as to shut the doors," she added, not liking too much the looks of this stalwart, though gaunt ruffian, and mistrusting his familiarity, in spite of the services he had more or less rendered them.

But the man only laughed, yet with some slight confusion apparent in his manner, and said:

"Oh! you are too much of my own kind to have any fear. You women have nothing to be robbed of-nothing to lose. And-Marseilles is full of everything which any can desire, except food and health. Here is the house. If you like it not, there are many others."

Casting her eyes up at what was in truth a mansion, Marion answered that it would do very well. Then she advanced up the steps towards it, still leading and supporting Laure, and bidding all the other women follow her.

"My sisters," she cried, "here is rest and shelter from the poisoned air of the city. And there should be good beds and couches within. Ah! we have none of us known a bed for so long. We should sleep well here."

Whereupon one and all filed in after her, uttering prayers that the pestilence might not be lurking within the place and making it even more dangerous than the open air.

"Fear not," the man replied. "Fear not. The owner fled at the first outbreak. Not one has died here unless-unless some have crawled in to do so. It is untainted."

"Now," said Marion to him, "begone and leave us. To-morrow we will do aught that we are bidden. You will find us here," and as he stood upon the steps of the house, she closed the door.

The place echoed gloomily with the reverberation. It appeared to be a vast, mournful building as they cast their eyes around the great hall into which the moonlight streamed through a window above the stairs. Mournful now all deserted as it was, yet a building in which many a festival and much gaiety had, for sure, taken place in vanished years. The stairs were richly carpeted; so, too, the hall. Upon the walls hung pictures and quaint curiosities, brought, doubtless, by the owner's ships from far-off ports; bronzes and silken banners, great jars of Eastern workmanship, savage weapons and shields and tokens; also statues and statuettes in niches and corners.

"The mansion of a rich, wealthy merchant," Marion thought to herself, seeing all these things plainly in the pure moonlight streaming from the untainted heavens above. "The home of gentle women and bright, happy men. Now, the refuge of such as we are-lepers, outcasts, gaol-birds."

And even as she so thought, Marion pushed open a door on the right of the hall, when, seeing that it led to a rich, handsome salon, she bade her companions follow her.

CHAPTER XXIV

A DISCOVERY

Aided by the light of the moon which now soared high in the heavens, she being in her second quarter, the women-of whom there still remained many out of the original number that quitted Paris-distributed themselves about this vast and sumptuous abode of gloom. Some, and these were the women who felt the most worn out and prostrate of all, flung themselves at once upon the rich Segoda ottomans and lounges which were in the saloon they had entered; one or two even cast themselves down upon the soft, thick Smyrna carpets, protesting they could go no further, no, not so much as up a flight of stairs even to find a bed; while others did what these would not, and so proceeded to the first floor. Amongst them went Marion and Laure.

Yet this, they soon found, was also full of reception rooms and with none of the sleeping apartments upon it; there being a vast saloon stretching the whole length of the front of the house with smaller rooms at the back, and in the former the two women cast themselves down, lying close together upon a lounge so big that two more besides themselves might easily have reposed thereon.

"Sleep," said Marion, "sleep for some hours at least. To-morrow they will come for us; yet, heart up! the work cannot be hard. 'Tis but to nurse the sick; and, remember, if we survive-if we escape contagion-we shall doubtless be free. That Sheriff, that unhappy, bereaved man promised as much; he will not go back upon his word."

"Can he undo the law?" muttered her companion, as now she prepared to find rest by Marion's side. "Are we not condemned to be deported to the other side of the world? How then can he set us free? And, even though free, what use the freedom? We have not the wherewithal to live."

"Bah!" exclaimed Marion, ruthlessly thrusting aside every doubt that might rise in Laure's, or her own, mind as to the possibility of a brighter future ahead: "Bah! we are outside the law's grip now. We can set ourselves free at any moment. Can we not escape from out this city as inhabitants who are fugitives? Or get away-"