Chapter 6

--"Dios, mi querida," answered Carmen.--"God, my darling.... All things were made by Him" (todas las cosas fueron hechas por El).

Even the wicked Sea! And He had said unto it: "Thus far, and no farther." ... Was that why it had not overtaken and devoured her when she ran back in fear from the sudden reaching out of its waves? Thus far....? But there were times when it disobeyed--when it rushed further, shaking the world! Was it because God was then asleep--could not hear, did not see, until too late?

And the tumultuous ocean terrified her more and more: it filled her sleep with enormous nightmare;--it came upon her in dreams, mountain-shadowing,--holding her with its spell, smothering her power of outcry, heaping itself to the stars.

Carmen became alarmed;--she feared that the nervous and delicate child might die in one of those moaning dreams out of which she had to arouse her, night after night. But Feliu, answering her anxiety with one of his favorite proverbs, suggested a heroic remedy:--

--"The world is like the sea: those who do not know how to swim in it are drowned;--and the sea is like the world," he added.... "Chita must learn to swim!"

And he found the time to teach her. Each morning, at sunrise, he took her into the water. She was less terrified the first time than Carmen thought she would be;--she seemed to feel confidence in Feliu; although she screamed piteously before her first ducking at his hands. His teaching was not gentle. He would carry her out, perched upon his shoulder, until the water rose to his own neck; and there he would throw her from him, and let her struggle to reach him again as best she could. The first few mornings she had to be pulled out almost at once; but after that Feliu showed her less mercy, and helped her only when he saw she was really in danger. He attempted no other instruction until she had learned that in order to save herself from being half choked by the salt water, she must not scream; and by the time she became habituated to these austere experiences, she had already learned by instinct alone how to keep herself afloat for a while, how to paddle a little with her hands. Then he commenced to train her to use them,--to lift them well out and throw them forward as if reaching, to dip them as the blade of an oar is dipped at an angle, without loud splashing;--and he showed her also how to use her feet. She learned rapidly and astonishingly well. In less than two months Feliu felt really proud at the progress made by his tiny pupil: it was a delight to watch her lifting her slender arms above the water in swift, easy curves, with the same fine grace that marked all her other natural motions. Later on he taught her not to fear the sea even when it growled a little,--how to ride a swell, how to face a breaker, how to dive. She only needed practice thereafter; and Carmen, who could also swim, finding the child's health improving marvellously under this new discipline, took good care that Chita should practice whenever the mornings were not too cold, or the water too rough.

With the first thrill of delight at finding herself able to glide over the water unassisted, the child's superstitious terror of the sea passed away. Even for the adult there are few physical joys keener than the exultation of the swimmer;--how much greater the same glee as newly felt by an imaginative child,--a child, whose vivid fancy can lend unutterable value to the most insignificant trifles, can transform a weed-patch to an Eden! ... Of her own accord she would ask for her morning bath, as soon as she opened her eyes;--it even required some severity to prevent her from remaining in the water too long. The sea appeared to her as something that had become tame for her sake, something that loved her in a huge rough way; a tremendous playmate, whom she no longer feared to see come bounding and barking to lick her feet. And, little by little, she also learned the wonderful healing and caressing power of the monster, whose cool embrace at once dispelled all drowsiness, feverishness, weariness,--even after the sultriest nights when the air had seemed to burn, and the mosquitoes had filled the chamber with a sound as of water boiling in many kettles. And on mornings when the sea was in too wicked a humor to be played with, how she felt the loss of her loved sport, and prayed for calm! Her delicate constitution changed;--the soft, pale flesh became firm and brown, the meagre limbs rounded into robust symmetry, the thin cheeks grew peachy with richer life; for the strength of the sea had entered into her; the sharp breath of the sea had renewed and brightened her young blood....

... Thou primordial Sea, the awfulness of whose antiquity hath stricken all mythology dumb;--thou most wrinkled diving Sea, the millions of whose years outnumber even the multitude of thy hoary motions;--thou omniform and most mysterious Sea, mother of the monsters and the gods,--whence shine eternal youth? Still do thy waters hold the infinite thrill of that Spirit which brooded above their face in the Beginning!--still is thy quickening breath an elixir unto them that flee to thee for life,--like the breath of young girls, like the breath of children, prescribed for the senescent by magicians of old,--prescribed unto weazened elders in the books of the Wizards.

III

... Eighteen hundred and sixty-seven;--midsummer in the pest-smitten city of New Orleans.

Heat motionless and ponderous. The steel-blue of the sky bleached from the furnace-circle of the horizon;--the lukewarm river ran yellow and noiseless as a torrent of fluid wax. Even sounds seemed blunted by the heaviness of the air;--the rumbling of wheels, the reverberation of footsteps, fell half-toned upon the ear, like sounds that visit a dozing brain.

Daily, almost at the same hour, the continuous sense of atmospheric oppression became thickened;--a packed herd of low-bellying clouds lumbered up from the Gulf; crowded blackly against the sun; flickered, thundered, and burst in torrential rain--tepid, perpendicular--and vanished utterly away. Then, more furiously than before, the sun flamed down;--roofs and pavements steamed; the streets seemed to smoke; the air grew suffocating with vapor; and the luminous city filled with a faint, sickly odor,--a stale smell, as of dead leaves suddenly disinterred from wet mould,--as of grasses decomposing after a flood. Something saffron speckled the slimy water of the gutters; sulphur some called it; others feared even to give it a name! Was it only the wind-blown pollen of some innocuous plant?

I do not know; but to many it seemed as if the Invisible Destruction were scattering visible seed! ... Such were the days; and each day the terror-stricken city offered up its hecatomb to death; and the faces of all the dead were yellow as flame!

"DECEDE--"; "DECEDEE--"; "FALLECIO;"--"DIED." ... On the door-posts, the telegraph-poles, the pillars of verandas, the lamps,--over the government letter-boxes,--everywhere glimmered the white annunciations of death. All the city was spotted with them. And lime was poured into the gutters; and huge purifying fires were kindled after sunset.

The nights began with a black heat;--there were hours when the acrid air seemed to ferment for stagnation, and to burn the bronchial tubing;--then, toward morning, it would grow chill with venomous vapors, with morbific dews,--till the sun came up to lift the torpid moisture, and to fill the buildings with oven-glow. And the interminable procession of mourners and hearses and carriages again began to circulate between the centres of life and of death;--and long trains and steamships rushed from the port, with heavy burden of fugitives.

Wealth might flee; yet even in flight there was peril. Men, who might have been saved by the craft of experienced nurses at home, hurriedly departed in apparent health, unconsciously carrying in their blood the toxic principle of a malady unfamiliar to physicians of the West and North;--and they died upon their way, by the road-side, by the river-banks, in woods, in deserted stations, on the cots of quarantine hospitals. Wiser those who sought refuge in the purity of the pine forests, or in those near Gulf Islands, whence the bright sea-breath kept ever sweeping back the expanding poison into the funereal swamps, into the misty lowlands. The watering-resorts became overcrowded;--then the fishing villages were thronged,--at least all which were easy to reach by steamboat or by lugger. And at last, even Viosca's Point,--remote and unfamiliar as it was,--had a stranger to shelter: a good old gentleman named Edwards, rather broken down in health--who came as much for quiet as for sea-air, and who had been warmly recommended to Feliu by Captain Harris. For some years he had been troubled by a disease of the heart.

Certainly the old invalid could not have found a more suitable place so far as rest and quiet were concerned. The season had early given such little promise that several men of the Point betook themselves elsewhere; and the aged visitor had two or three vacant cabins from among which to select a dwelling-place. He chose to occupy the most remote of all, which Carmen furnished for him with a cool moss bed and some necessary furniture,--including a big wooden rocking-chair. It seemed to him very comfortable thus. He took his meals with the family, spent most of the day in his own quarters, spoke very little, and lived so unobtrusively and inconspicuously that his presence in the settlement was felt scarcely more than that of some dumb creature,--some domestic animal,--some humble pet whose relation to the family is only fully comprehended after it has failed to appear for several days in its accustomed place of patient waiting,--and we know that it is dead.

IV.

Persistently and furiously, at half-past two o'clock of an August morning, Sparicio rang Dr. La Brierre's night-bell. He had fifty dollars in his pocket, and a letter to deliver. He was to earn another fifty dollars--deposited in Feliu's hands,--by bringing the Doctor to Viosca's Point. He had risked his life for that money,--and was terribly in earnest.

Julien descended in his under-clothing, and opened the letter by the light of the hall lamp. It enclosed a check for a larger fee than he had ever before received, and contained an urgent request that he would at once accompany Sparicio to Viosca's Point,--as the sender was in hourly danger of death. The letter, penned in a long, quavering hand, was signed,--"Henry Edwards."

His father's dear old friend! Julien could not refuse to go,--though he feared it was a hopeless case. Angina pectoris,--and a third attack at seventy years of age! Would it even be possible to reach the sufferer's bedside in time? "Due giorno,--con vento,"--said Sparicio. Still, he must go; and at once. It was Friday morning;--might reach the Point Saturday night, with a good wind ... He roused his housekeeper, gave all needful instructions, prepared his little medicine-chest;--and long before the first rose-gold fire of day had flashed to the city spires, he was sleeping the sleep of exhaustion in the tiny cabin of a fishing-sloop.

... For eleven years Julien had devoted himself, heart and soul, to the exercise of that profession he had first studied rather as a polite accomplishment than as a future calling. In the unselfish pursuit of duty he had found the only possible consolation for his irreparable loss; and when the war came to sweep away his wealth, he entered the struggle valorously, not to strive against men, but to use his science against death. After the passing of that huge shock, which left all the imposing and splendid fabric of Southern feudalism wrecked forever, his profession stood him in good stead;--he found himself not only able to supply those personal wants he cared to satisfy, but also to alleviate the misery of many whom he had known in days of opulence;--the princely misery that never doffed its smiling mask, though living in secret, from week to week, on bread and orange-leaf tea;--the misery that affected condescension in accepting an invitation to dine,--staring at the face of a watch (refused by the Mont-de-Piete) with eyes half blinded by starvation;--the misery which could afford but one robe for three marriageable daughters,--one plain dress to be worn in turn by each of them, on visiting days;--the pretty misery--young, brave, sweet,--asking for a "treat" of cakes too jocosely to have its asking answered,--laughing and coquetting with its well-fed wooers, and crying for hunger after they were gone. Often and often, his heart had pleaded against his purse for such as these, and won its case in the silent courts of Self. But ever mysteriously the gift came,--sometimes as if from the hand of a former slave; sometimes as from a remorseful creditor, ashamed to write his name. Only yellow Victorine knew; but the Doctor's housekeeper never opened those sphinx-lips of hers, until years after the Doctor's name had disappeared from the City Directory...

He had grown quite thin,--a little gray. The epidemic had burthened him with responsibilities too multifarious and ponderous for his slender strength to bear. The continual nervous strain of abnormally protracted duty, the perpetual interruption of sleep, had almost prostrated even his will. Now he only hoped that, during this brief absence from the city, he might find renewed strength to do his terrible task.

Mosquitoes bit savagely; and the heat became thicker;--and there was yet no wind. Sparicio and his hired boy Carmelo had been walking backward and forward for hours overhead,--urging the vessel yard by yard, with long poles, through the slime of canals and bayous. With every heavy push, the weary boy would sigh out,--"Santo Antonio!--Santo Antonio!" Sullen Sparicio himself at last burst into vociferations of ill-humor:--"Santo Antonio?--Ah! santissimu e santu diavulu! ... Sacramentu paescite vegnu un asidente!--malidittu lu Signuri!" All through the morning they walked and pushed, trudged and sighed and swore; and the minutes dragged by more wearily than the shuffling of their feet. "Managgia Cristo co tutta a croce!" ... "Santissimu e santu diavulu!" ...

But as they reached at last the first of the broad bright lakes, the heat lifted, the breeze leaped up, the loose sail flapped and filled; and, bending graciously as a skater, the old San Marco began to shoot in a straight line over the blue flood. Then, while the boy sat at the tiller, Sparicio lighted his tiny charcoal furnace below, and prepared a simple meal,--delicious yellow macaroni, flavored with goats' cheese; some fried fish, that smelled appetizingly; and rich black coffee, of Oriental fragrance and thickness. Julien ate a little, and lay down to sleep again. This time his rest was undisturbed by the mosquitoes; and when he woke, in the cooling evening, he felt almost refreshed. The San Marco was flying into Barataria Bay. Already the lantern in the lighthouse tower had begun to glow like a little moon; and right on the rim of the sea, a vast and vermilion sun seemed to rest his chin. Gray pelicans came flapping around the mast;--sea-birds sped hurtling by, their white bosoms rose-flushed by the western glow ... Again Sparicio's little furnace was at work,--more fish, more macaroni, more black coffee; also a square-shouldered bottle of gin made its appearance. Julien ate less sparingly at this second meal; and smoked a long time on deck with Sparicio, who suddenly became very good-humored, and chatted volubly in bad Spanish, and in much worse English. Then while the boy took a few hours' sleep, the Doctor helped delightedly in maneuvering the little vessel. He had been a good yachtsman in other years; and Sparicio declared he would make a good fisherman. By midnight the San Marco began to run with a long, swinging gait;--she had reached deep water. Julien slept soundly; the steady rocking of the sloop seemed to soothe his nerves.

--"After all," he thought to himself, as he rose from his little bunk next morning,--"something like this is just what I needed." ... The pleasant scent of hot coffee greeted him;--Carmelo was handing him the tin cup containing it, down through the hatchway. After drinking it he felt really hungry;--he ate more macaroni than he had ever eaten before. Then, while Sparicio slept, he aided Carmelo; and during the middle of the day he rested again. He had not had so much uninterrupted repose for many a week. He fancied he could feel himself getting strong. At supper-time it seemed to him he could not get enough to eat,--although there was plenty for everybody.

All day long there had been exactly the same wave-crease distorting the white shadow of the San Marco's sail upon the blue water;--all day long they had been skimming over the liquid level of a world so jewel-blue that the low green ribbon-strips of marsh land, the far-off fleeing lines of pine-yellow sand beach, seemed flaws or breaks in the perfected color of the universe;--all day long had the cloudless sky revealed through all its exquisite transparency that inexpressible tenderness which no painter and no poet can ever reimage,--that unutterable sweetness which no art of man may ever shadow forth, and which none may ever comprehend,--though we feel it to be in some strange way akin to the luminous and unspeakable charm that makes us wonder at the eyes of a woman when she loves.

Evening came; and the great dominant celestial tone deepened;--the circling horizon filled with ghostly tints,--spectral greens and grays, and pearl-lights and fish-colors ... Carmelo, as he crouched at the tiller, was singing, in a low, clear alto, some tristful little melody. Over the sea, behind them, lay, black-stretching, a long low arm of island-shore;--before them flamed the splendor of sun-death; they were sailing into a mighty glory,--into a vast and awful light of gold.

Shading his vision with his fingers, Sparicio pointed to the long lean limb of land from which they were fleeing, and said to La Brierre:--

--"Look-a, Doct-a! Last-a Islan'!"

Julien knew it;--he only nodded his head in reply, and looked the other way,--into the glory of God. Then, wishing to divert the fisherman's attention to another theme, he asked what was Carmelo singing. Sparicio at once shouted to the lad:--

--"Ha! ... ho! Carmelo!--Santu diavulu! ... Sing-a loud-a! Doct-a lik-a! Sing-a! sing!" .... "He sing-a nicee,"--added the boatman, with his peculiar dark smile. And then Carmelo sang, loud and clearly, the song he had been singing before,--one of those artless Mediterranean ballads, full of caressing vowel-sounds, and young passion, and melancholy beauty:--

"M'ama ancor, belta fulgente, Come tu m'amasti allor;-- Ascoltar non dei gente, Solo interroga il tuo cor." ...

--"He sing-a nicee,--mucha bueno!" murmured the fisherman. And then, suddenly,--with a rich and splendid basso that seemed to thrill every fibre of the planking,--Sparicio joined in the song:--

"M'ama pur d'amore eterno, Ne deilitto sembri a te; T'assicuro che l'inferno Una favola sol e." ...

All the roughness of the man was gone! To Julien's startled fancy, the fishers had ceased to be;--lo! Carmelo was a princely page; Sparicio, a king! How perfectly their voices married together!--they sang with passion, with power, with truth, with that wondrous natural art which is the birthright of the rudest Italian soul. And the stars throbbed out in the heaven; and the glory died in the west; and the night opened its heart; and the splendor of the eternities fell all about them. Still they sang; and the San Marco sped on through the soft gloom, ever slightly swerved by the steady blowing of the southeast wind in her sail;--always wearing the same crimpling-frill of wave-spray about her prow,--always accompanied by the same smooth-backed swells,--always spinning out behind her the same long trail of interwoven foam. And Julien looked up. Ever the night thrilled more and more with silent twinklings;--more and more multitudinously lights pointed in the eternities;--the Evening Star quivered like a great drop of liquid white fire ready to fall;--Vega flamed as a pharos lighting the courses ethereal,--to guide the sailing of the suns, and the swarming of fleets of worlds. Then the vast sweetness of that violet night entered into his blood,--filled him with that awful joy, so near akin to sadness, which the sense of the Infinite brings,--when one feels the poetry of the Most Ancient and Most Excellent of Poets, and then is smitten at once with the contrast-thought of the sickliness and selfishness of Man,--of the blindness and brutality of cities, whereinto the divine blue light never purely comes, and the sanctification of the Silences never descends ... furious cities, walled away from heaven ... Oh! if one could only sail on thus always, always through such a night--through such a star-sprinkled violet light, and hear Sparicio and Carmelo sing, even though it were the same melody always, always the same song!

... "Scuza, Doct-a!--look-a out!" Julien bent down, as the big boom, loosened, swung over his head. The San Marco was rounding into shore,--heading for her home. Sparicio lifted a huge conch-shell from the deck, put it to his lips, filled his deep lungs, and flung out into the night--thrice--a profound, mellifluent, booming horn-tone. A minute passed. Then, ghostly faint, as an echo from very far away, a triple blowing responded...

And a long purple mass loomed and swelled into sight, heightened, approached--land and trees black-shadowing, and lights that swung ... The San Marco glided into a bayou,--under a high wharfing of timbers, where a bearded fisherman waited, and a woman. Sparicio flung up a rope.

The bearded man caught it by the lantern-light, and tethered the San Marco to her place. Then he asked, in a deep voice:

--"Has traido al Doctor?"

--"Si, si!" answered Sparicio... "Y el viejo?"

--"Aye! pobre!" responded Feliu,--"hace tres dias que esta muerto."

Henry Edwards was dead!

He had died very suddenly, without a cry or a word, while resting in his rocking-chair,--the very day after Sparicio had sailed. They had made him a grave in the marsh,--among the high weeds, not far from the ruined tomb of the Spanish fisherman. But Sparicio had fairly earned his hundred dollars.

V.

So there was nothing to do at Viosca's Point except to rest. Feliu and all his men were going to Barataria in the morning on business;--the Doctor could accompany them there, and take the Grand Island steamer Monday for New Orleans. With this intention Julien retired,--not sorry for being able to stretch himself at full length on the good bed prepared for him, in one of the unoccupied cabins. But he woke before day with a feeling of intense prostration, a violent headache, and such an aversion for the mere idea of food that Feliu's invitation to breakfast at five o'clock gave him an internal qualm. Perhaps a touch of malaria. In any case he felt it would be both dangerous and useless to return to town unwell; and Feliu, observing his condition, himself advised against the journey. Wednesday he would have another opportunity to leave; and in the meanwhile Carmen would take good care of him ... The boats departed, and Julien slept again.

The sun was high when he rose up and dressed himself, feeling no better. He would have liked to walk about the place, but felt nervously afraid of the sun. He did not remember having ever felt so broken down before. He pulled a rocking-chair to the window, tried to smoke a cigar. It commenced to make him feel still sicker, and he flung it away. It seemed to him the cabin was swaying, as the San Marco swayed when she first reached the deep water.