Servants of Sin: A Romance

by John Bloundelle-Burton

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."