Chapter 8

Fontenette slept. Loath to see him open his eyes, I kept very still, while nearly another hour dragged by, listening hard for Senda's return, but hearing only, once or twice, through the narrow stairway and closets between the two bedrooms, a faint stir that showed Mrs. Fontenette was awake and being waited on.

I was grateful for the rarity of outdoor sounds; a few tree-frogs piped, two or three solitary wayfarers passed in the street; twice or more the sergeant of the night-watch trilled his whistle in a street or two behind us, and twice or more in front; and once, and once again, came the distant bellow of steamboats passing each other--not the famous boats whose whistle you would know one from another, for they were laid up. I doubt if I have forgotten any sound that I noticed that night. I remember the drowsy rumble of the midnight horse-car and tinkle of its mule's bell, first in Prytania street and then in Magazine. It was just after these that at last a black hand beckoned me to the door, and under her breath the old nurse told me she was just back from our house, where her mistress had sent her, and that--"De-eh--de-eh"--

"The Baroness?"

"Yass, sih, de--de outlayndish la-ady--"

Senda had sent word that the child had only an indigestion--a thing serious enough in such a case--and though still slightly feverish was now asleep, but restless.

"Sih? Yass, sir--awnressless--dass 'zac'ly what I say!"

Wherefore Senda would either remain in the nursery or return to us, as we should elect.

"O no, sih, she no need to come back right now, anyhow; yass, sih, dass what de Mis' say, too."

"Then you'll stay here," I whispered.

"Yass, sih, ef de Lawd wil'--I mean ef you wants me, sih--yass, sih, thaynk you, sih. I loves to tend on Mis' Fontenette, she got sich a bu'ful fa aith, same like she say I got. Yass, sih, I dess loves to set an' watch her--wid dat sweet samtimonious fa-ace."

Fontenette being still asleep I gave her my place for a moment, and went to the door between the parlor and his wife's room. Mrs. Smith came to it, barely breathing the triumphant word--"Just dropped asleep!"

When I replied that I would take a little fresh air at the front door she asked if at my leisure I would empty and bring in from the window-sill, around on the garden side of her patient's room a saucer containing the over-sweetened remains of some orange-leaf tea, that "D.V." had made "for to wrench out de nerves." She wanted the saucer.

I went outside a step or two and took in a long draught of good air--the air of a yellow-fever room is dreadful. It was my first breath of mental relief also; almost the first that night, and the last.

I paced once or twice the short narrow walk between the front flower-beds, surprised at their well-kept and blooming condition until I remembered Senda. The moths were out in strong numbers, and it was delightful to forget graver things for a moment and see the flowers bend coyly under their passionate kisses and blushingly rise again when the sweet robbery was finished. So it happened that I came where a glance across to my own garden showed me, on the side farthest from the nursery, a favorite bush, made pale by a light that could come only from the entomologist's window! I went in promptly, told what I proposed to do, and hurried out again.

XIX

I crossed into my garden and silently mounted the balcony stairs I have mentioned once before. His balcony door was ajar. His room was empty. He had occupied the bed. A happy thought struck me--to feel the spot where he had lain; it was still warm. Good! But his clothes were all gone except his shoes, and they, you remember, were no proof that he was indoors.

I stole down into the garden once more, and looked hurriedly in several directions, but saw no sign of him. I am not a ferocious man even when alone, but as I came near the fence of our fat neighbor--once fat, poor fellow, and destined to be so again in time--and still saw no one, I was made conscious of waving my fist and muttering through my gritting teeth, by hearing my name softly called. It was an unfamiliar female voice that spoke, from a window beyond the fence, and it flashed on my remembrance that two kinswomen of my neighbor were watching with his wife, whose case was giving new cause for anxiety. It was Mrs. Soandso, the voice explained, and could I possibly come in there a moment?--if only to the window!

"Is our friend the Baron over here?" I asked, as I came to it. He was not. "Well, never mind," I said; "how is your patient?"

"Oh that's just what we wish we knew. In some ways she seems better, but she's more unquiet. She's had some slight nausea and it seems to increase. Do you think that is important?"

"Yes," I said, "very. I hear some one cracking ice; you are keeping ice on her throat--no? Well, begin it at once, and persuade her to lie on her back as quietly as she can, and get her to sleep if possible! Doctor--no; he wouldn't come before morning, anyhow; but I'll send Mrs. Smith right over to you, if she possibly can come."

I turned hurriedly away and had taken only a few steps, when I lit upon the entomologist. "Well, I'll just--what _are_ you doing here? Where were you when I was in your room just now?" His shoes were on.

"Vhat you vanted mit me? I vas by dot librair' going. For vhat you moof dot putterfly-net fon t'e mandtelpiece? You make me _too_ much troubple to find dot vhen I vas in a hurry!" He shook it at me.

"Hurry!" In my anger and distress I laughed. "My friend"--laying a hand on him--"you'll hurry across the street with me."

He waved me off. "Yes; go on, you; I coom py undt py; I dtink t'ere iss vun maud come into dot gardten, vhat I haf not pefore seen since more as acht years, alreadty!"

"Yes," I retorted, "and so you're here at the gate alone. Now come right along with me! Aren't there enough lives in danger to-night, but you must" -He stopped me in the middle of the street.

"Mine Gott! vhat iss dot you say? Who--_who_--mine Gott! _who_ iss her life in dtanger? Iss dot--mine Gott! is dot he-ere?" He pointed to Mrs. Fontenette's front window.

I could hardly keep my fist off him. "Hush! you--For one place it's _here_." I pushed him with my finger.

"Ach!" he exclaimed in infinite relief. "I dt'ought you mean--I--I dt'ought--hmm!--hmm! I am dtired." He leaned on me like a sick child and we went into the cottage parlor. The moment he saw the lounge he lay down upon it, or I should have taken him back into the dining-room.

"Sha'n't I put that net away for you?" I murmured, as I dropped a light covering over him.

But he only hugged the toy closer. "No; I geep it--hmm!--hmm!--I am dtired--"

XX

Both patients, I found, were drowsing; the husband peacefully, the wife with troubled dreams. When the Baron spoke her eyes opened with a look, first eager and then distressful, but closed again. We put the old black woman temporarily into her room and Mrs. Smith hurried to our other neighbors, whence she was to despatch one of their servants to bid Senda come to us at once. But "No battle"--have I already used the proverb? She gave the message to the servant, but it never reached Senda. Somebody forgot. As I sat by Fontenette with ears alert for Senda's coming and was wondering at the unbroken silence, he opened his eyes on me and smiled.

"Ah!" he softly said, "thad was a pleasan' dream!"

"A pleasant dream, was it?"

"Yes; I was having the dream thad my wife she was showing me those rose- _bushes_; an' every rose-_bush_ it had roses, an' every rose it was perfect."

I leaned close and said that he had been mighty good not to ask about her all these many days, and that if he would engage to do as well for as long a time again, and to try now to have another good dream I would tell him that she was sleeping and was without any alarming symptoms. O lucky speech! It was true when it was uttered; but how soon the hour belied it!

As he obediently closed his eyes, his hand stole out from the side of the covers and felt for mine. I gave it and as he kept it his thought seemed to me to flow into my brain. I could feel him, as it were, thinking of his wife, loving her through all the deeps of his still nature with seven-- yes, seventy--times the passion that I fancied would ever be possible to that young girl I had seen a few hours earlier showing her heart to the world, with falling hair and rending sobs. As he lay thus trying to court back his dream of perfect roses, I had my delight in knowing he would never dream-what Senda saw so plainly, yet with such faultless modesty-- that all true love draws its strength and fragrance from the riches not of the loved one's, but of the lover's soul.

His grasp had begun to loosen, when I thought I heard from the wife's room a sudden sound that made my mind flash back to the saucer I had failed to bring in. It was as though the old-fashioned, unweighted window-sash, having been slightly lifted, had slipped from the fingers and fallen shut. I hearkened, and the next instant there came softly searching through doors, through walls, through my own flesh and blood, a long half-wailing sigh. Fontenette tightened on my hand, then dropped it, and opening his eyes sharply, asked, "What was that?"

"What was what, old fellow?" I pretended to have been more than half asleep myself.

"Did I only dream I 'eard it, thad noise?"

"That isn't a hard thing to do in your condition," I replied, with my serenest smile, and again he closed his eyes. Yet for two or three minutes it was plain he listened; but soon he forbore and began once more to slumber. Then very soon I faintly detected a stir in the parlor, and stealing to the door to listen through the dining-room, came abruptly upon the old black woman. Disaster was written on her face and when she spoke tears came into her eyes.

"De madam want you," she said, and passed in to take my place.

As I went on to the parlor, Mrs. Smith, just inside Mrs. Fontenette's door, beckoned me. As I drew near I made an inquiring motion in the direction of our neighbor across the way.

"I'm hopeful," was her whispered reply; "but--in here"--she shook her head. Just then the new maid came from our house, and Mrs. Smith whispered again-- "Go over quickly to the Baron; he's in his room. 'Twas he came for me. He'll tell you all. But he'll not tell his wife, and she mustn't know."

As I ran across the street I divined almost in full what had taken place.

I had noticed the possibility of some of the facts when I had left the Baron asleep on the parlor lounge, but they could have done no harm, even when Senda did not come, had it not been for two other facts which I had failed to foresee; one, that we had unwittingly overtasked our willing old nurse, and in her chair in Mrs. Fontenette's room she was going to fall asleep; and the other that the entomologist would waken.

XXI

And now see what a cunning trap the most innocent intentions may sometimes set. There was a mirror in the sick-room purposely so placed that, with the parlor door ajar, the watcher, but not the patient, could see into the parlor, and could be seen from the parlor when sitting anywhere between the mirror and the window beyond it. This window was the one that looked into the side garden. Purposely, too, the lounge had been placed so as to give and receive these advantages. A candle stood on the window's inner ledge and was screened from the unseen bed, but shone outward through the window and inward upon the mirror. The front door of the parlor opened readily to anyone within or without who knew enough to use its two latches at once, but neither within nor without to--the Baron, say--who did not know.

Do you see it? As he lay awake on the lounge his eye was, of course, drawn constantly to the mirror by the reflected light of the candle, and to its images of the nodding watcher and of the window just beyond. So lying and gazing, he had suddenly beheld that which brought him from the lounge in an instant, net in hand, and tortured to find the front door--by which he would have slipped out and around to the window--fastened! What he saw was the moth--the moth so many years unseen. Now it sipped at the saucer of sweet stuff, now hovered over it, now was lost in the dark, and now fluttered up or slid down the pane, lured by the beam of the candle.

If he was not to lose it, there was but one thing to do. With his eyes fixed, moth-mad, on the window, he glided in, passed the two sleepers, and stealthily lifted the sash with one hand, the other poising the net. The moth dropped under, the net swept after it, and the sash slipped and fell. Mrs. Fontenette rose wildly, and when she saw first the old woman, half starting from her seat with frightened stare, and then the entomologist speechless, motionless, and looming like an apparition, she gave that cry her husband heard, and fell back upon the pillow in a convulsion.

I found the Baron sitting on the side of his bed like a child trying to be awake without waking. No, not _trying_ to do or be anything; but aimless, dazed, silent, lost.

He obeyed, automatically, my every request. I set about getting him to bed at once, putting his clothes beyond his reach, and even locking his balcony door, without a sign of objection from him. Then I left him for a moment, and calling Senda from the nursery to the parlor told her the state of the different patients, including her husband, but without the hows and whys except that I had found him in our garden with his precious net. "And now, as it will soon be day, Mrs. Smith and I--with the servants and others--can take care of the four."

"If I"--meekly interrupted the sweet woman--"vill go for se doctors? I vill go." Soon she was off.

Then I went back to her husband, and finding his mood so changed that he was eager to explain everything, I let him talk; which I soon saw was a blunder; for he got pitifully excited, and wanted to go over the same ground again and again. One matter I was resolved to fix in his mind without delay. "Mark you," I charged him, "your wife must never know a word of this!"

"Eh?--No"--and the next instant the sick woman across the way was filling all his thought: "Mine Gott! she rice oop scaredt in t'e bedt, choost so!" and up he would start. Then as I pressed him down--"Mine Gott! I vould not go in, if I dhink she would do dot. Hmm! Hmm! I am sorry!--Undt I tidt not t'e mawdt get.

"Hmm! Even I titn't saw vhere it iss gone. Hmm! Hmm! I am sorry!

"Undt dot door kit shtuck! Hmm! Undt dot vindow iss not right made. Hmm!

"I tidn't vant to do dot--you know? Hmm! I am sorry!--Ach, mine Gott! she rice oop scaredt in t'e bedt, choost so!" Thus round and round. What to do for him I did not know!

Yet he grew quiet, and was as good as silent, when Senda, long before I began to look for her, stood unbonneted at my side in a soft glow of physical animation, her anxiety all hidden and with a pink spot on each cheek. I was startled. Had _I_ slept--or had she somehow ridden?

"Are the street-cars running already?" I asked.

"No," she murmured, producing a vial and looking for a glass. "'Tis I haf been running alreadty. Sat iss not so tiresome as to valk. Also it is safeh. I runned all se vay. Vill you sose drops drop faw me?" Her hand trembled.

I took the vial but did not meet her glance: for I was wondering if there was anything in the world she could ask of me that I would not do, and at such a time it is good for anyone as weak as I am to look at inanimate things.

"You got word to all three doctors?"

"Yes;" she gave her chin the drollest little twist--"sey are all coming --vhen sey get ready."

XXII

That is what they did; but the first who came, and the second, brought fresh courage; for the Baron--"would most likely be all right again, before the day was over"; our child was "virtually well"; and from next door-"better!" was the rapturous news. The third physician, too, was pleased with Fontenette's case, and we began at once to send the night- watchers to their rest by turns.

But there the gladness ended. At Mrs. Fontenette's bedside he asked no questions. In the parlor he said to us:

"Well, ... you've done your best; ... I've done mine; ... and it's of no use."

"Oh, Doctor!" exclaimed Mrs. Smith.

"Why, didn't you know it?" He jerked his thumb toward the sick-room. "She knows it. She told me she knew it, with her first glance."

He pondered. "I wish she were not so near _him_. If she were only in here --you see?"

Yes, we saw; the two patients would then be, on their either hand, one whole room apart, as if in two squares of a checkerboard that touch only at one corner.

"Well," he said, "we must move her at once. I'll show you how; I'll stay and help you."

It seemed more as though we helped him--a very little--as we first moved her and then took the light bedstead apart, set it up again in the parlor, and laid her in it, all without a noticeable sound, and with only great comfort of mind to her--for she knew why we did it. Then I made all haste to my own house again and had the relief to see, as Senda came toward me from her husband's room, that he had told her nothing. "Vell?" she eagerly asked.

"Well, Monsieur Fontenette is greatly improved!"

"O sat iss goodt! And se Madame; she, too, is betteh?--a little?--eh-- no-o?"

I said that what the doctor had feared, a "lesion," had taken place, and that there was no longer any hope of her life. At which she lighted up with a lovely defiance.

"Ho-o! no long-eh any hope! Yes, sare _iss_ long-er any hope! Vhere iss sat doc-toh? Sare _shall_ be hope! Kif _me_ sat patient! I can keep se vatch of mine huss-bandt at se _same_ time. He hass not a relapse! Kif me se patient! Many ossehs befo'e I haf savedt vhen hadt sose doctohs no long-eh any hope! Mine Gott! vas sare so much hope vhen she and her hussbandt mine sick hussbandt and me out of se street took in? Vill you let stay by mine hussbandt, anyhow a short vhile, one of yo' so goodt sairvants?" The instant I assented she flew down the veranda steps, through the garden, and out across the street.

I lingered a few moments with the entomologist before leaving him with others. He asked me only one question: "Hmm! Hmm! How she iss?"

"Why," said I, brightly, "I think she feels rather more comfortable than she did."

"Hmm!--Hmm!--I am sorry--Hmm!--Ach! mine Gott, I am so hoongary!--Hmm! I am so dtired mit dot sou-oup undt dose creckers!--Hmm! I vish I haf vonce a whole pifshtea-ak undt a glahss beer--hmm!"

"Hmm!" I echoed, "your subsequent marketing wouldn't cost much." I went down town on some imperative office business, came back in a cab, gave word to be called at such an hour, and lay down. But while I slept my order was countermanded and when I awakened it was once more midnight. I went to my open window and heard, through his balcony door--locked, now, and its key in my pocket--the Baron, snoring. Then I sprang into my clothes and sped across the street.

I went first around to the outer door of the dining-room, and was briefly told the best I could have hoped, of Fontenette. I returned to the front and stepped softly into what had been Mrs. Fontenette's room. Finding no one in it I waited, and when I presently heard voices in the other room, I touched its door-knob. Mrs. Smith came out, closed the door carefully, and sank into a seat.

"It's been a noble fight!" she said, smiling up through her tears. "When the doctor came back and saw how wonderfully the--the worst--had been held off, he joined in the battle! He's been here three times since!"

"And can it be that she is going to pull through?"

My wife's face went down into her hands. "O, no--no. She's dying now-- dying in Senda's arms!"

Her ear, quicker than mine, heard some sign within and she left me. But she was back almost at once, whispering:

"She knows you're here, and says she has a message to her husband which she can give only to you."

We gazed into each other's eyes. "Go in," she said.

As I entered, Senda tenderly disengaged herself, went out, and closed the door.

I drew near in silence and she began at once to speak, bidding me take the chair Senda had left, and with a tender smile thanking me for coming.

Then she said faintly and slowly, but with an unfaltering voice, "I want you to know one or two things so that if it ever should be my husband's affliction to find out how foolish and undutiful I have been, you can tell them to him. Tell him my wrongdoing was, from first to last, almost totally--almost totally----"

"Do you mean--intangible?"

"Yes, yes, intangible. Then if he should say that the intangible part is the priceless part--the life, the beauty, the very essence of the whole matter--isn't it strange that we women are slower than men to see that-- tell him I saw it, saw it and confessed it when for his sake I was slipping away from him by stealth out of life up to my merciful Judge.

"I may not be saying these things in their right order, but--tell him I wish he'd marry again; only let him first be sure the woman loves him as truly and deeply as he is sure to love her. I find I've never truly loved him till now. If he doesn't know it don't ever tell him; but tell him I died loving him and blessing him--for the unearned glorious love he gave me all my days. That's all. That's all to him. But I would like to send one word to"--she lifted her hand--

"Across the street?" I murmured.

Her eyes said yes. "Tell _him_--you may never see the right time for it, but if you do--tell him I craved his forgiveness."

I shook my head.

"Yes--yes, tell him so; it was far the most my fault; he is such a child; such a child of nature, I mean. Tell him I said it sounds very pretty to call ourselves and each other children of nature, but we have no right to be such. The word is 'Be thou clean,' and if we are not masters of nature we can't do it. Tell him that, will you? And tell him he has nothing to grieve for; I was only a dangerous toy, and I want him to love the dear Father for taking it away from him before he had hurt himself.

"Now I am ready to go--only--that hymn those black women--in the cemetery --you remember? I've made another verse to it. You'll find it--afterward-- on a scrap of paper between the leaves of my Bible. It isn't good poetry, of course; it's the only verse I ever composed. May I say it to you just for my--my testimony? It's this:

Yet though I have sinned, Lord, all others above, Though feeble my prayers, Lord; my tears all unseen; I'll trust in thy love, Lord; I'll trust in thy love-- O I'll trust in thy love like Mary Mahgaleen."

An exalted smile lighted her face as she sunk deeper into the pillows. She tried to speak again, but her voice failed. I bent my ear and she whispered--"Senda."

As I beckoned Senda in, Mrs. Smith motioned for me to come to her where she stood at a window whose sash she had slightly lifted; the same to which the moth had once been lured by the little puddle of sweet drink and the candle.

"Do you want to see a parable?" she whispered, and all but blinded with tears, she pointed to the lost moth lying half in, half out of the window, still beautiful but crushed; crushed with its wings full spread, not by anyone's choice, but because there are so many things in this universe that not even God can help from being as they are.

At a whispered call we turned, and Senda, in the door, herself all tears, made eager signs for us to come. The last summons had surprised even the dying. We went in noiseless haste, and found her just relaxing on Senda's arm. Yet she revived an instant; a quiver went through her frame like the dying shudder of a butterfly, her eyes gazed appealingly into Senda's, then fixed, and our poor little Titania was gone.

XXIII