"Ascend, Monsieur," said the man, pointing to the stairs. "Ascend, if you please." Walter Clarges did as was suggested, yet, even as he preceded the concierge, he took occasion to put his hand beneath his cloak and loosen his sword in its sheath. He did not know--he felt by no means sure of what he might encounter when he reached those rooms upon the second floor.
[CHAPTER XV]
THE PEST
Almost did those unhappy women of the cordon, or chain-gang--those skeletons clad in rags--thank God that something was occurring down below in the great city, the nature of which they could not divine beyond the fact that it was horrible, and must be something portentous, since it delayed their descent from the hill towards the ships that were, doubtless, now waiting in the harbour to transport them to New France. For, whatever the cause might be--whether the city were in flames, or attacked by an enemy from the sea, or set on fire in different places by the recent lightning--at least they were enabled to rest; to cast themselves upon the dank earth that reeked with the recent rain; to lie there with their eyes closed wearily.
Yet, amongst those women was one who knew--or guessed, surely--what was the cause of those flames; what they signified. The dark woman of Hérault--the woman who, as a child, had listened to stories told of not so many years ago, when, forth from this smoking city which lay now at their feet, had rushed countless people seeking the pure air of the plains and mountains; people seeking to escape from the stifling and pestiferous poison of the pest that was lurking in the narrow, confined streets of Marseilles.
"It has come to the city again," she whispered in Laure's ear, as the latter lay prostrate by her side--chained to her side--"As it has come, they say, more than thirty times since first Christ walked the earth--since Cæsar first made the place his. It must be that it has come again."
"What?" murmured Laure, not understanding. "What has come? Freedom or death? Which is it?"
"Probably both," Marion Lascelles answered. "Freedom and death. Both."
Then, because her eyes were clearer than the eyes of many by whom she was surrounded, and because her great, strong frame had resisted even the fatigues and the miseries of that terrible journey from Paris to which so many of her original companions had succumbed--to which all had succumbed, more or less!--she was able to observe that the mounted gendarmes and the warders and gaolers were holding close consultation; and that, also, they looked terror-stricken and agitated. She was able to observe, too, that a moment later they had been joined by a creature which had crept up the hill to where they were, and had slowly drawn near to them. Yet it had done so as though half afraid to approach too close, or as one who feared that he might be beaten away as an unknown dog is driven off on approaching too near to the heels of a stranger.
Thrusting her brown, sunburnt hands through her matted, coal-black hair, now filled and clotted with mud that had once been the dust of the long weary roads she had traversed until the rain turned it into what it was, she parted that hair from off her eyes and glared transfixed at the figure. It was that of a man almost old, his sparse white locks glistening in the rays of the moon which now overtopped the brow of the hill behind them--yet it was neither the man's age nor his grey hairs that appalled her. Instead, it was his face, which was of a loathsome yellow hue--it being plainly perceptible in the moonbeams--as is the face of a man stricken to death with jaundice; a face covered, too, with huge carbuncles and pustules, and with eyes of a chalky, dense white, sunken in the hollow sockets.