From time to time, when shorthanded we had used skilled nurses; but when Mrs. Fontenette grew haggard and we mentioned them, she said distressfully: "O! no hireling hands! I can't bear the thought of it!" and indeed the thought of the average hired "fever-nurse" of those days was not inspiring; so I served as her alternate when she would accept any and throw herself on the couch Senda had spread in the little parlor.

XVII

At length one day I was called up at dawn and went over to take her place once more, and when after several hours had pa.s.sed I was still with him, Fontenette said, while I bent down,

"I have the fear thad's going to go hahd with my wife, being of the Nawth."

"Why, what's going to go hard, old fellow?"

"The feveh. My dear frien', don't I know tha'z the only thing would keep heh f'om me thad long?"

"Still, you don't know her case will be a hard one; it may be very light.

But don't talk now."

"Well--I hope _so_. Me, I wou'n' take ten thousand dollahs faw thad feveh myself--to see that devotion of my wife. You muz 'ave observe', eh?"

"Yes, indeed, old man; n.o.body could help observing. I wouldn't talk any more just now."

"No," he insisted, "n.o.body could eveh doubt. 'Action speak loudeh than word,' eh?"

"Yes, but we don't want either from you just now." I put his restless arms back under the cover; not to keep the outer temperature absolutely even was counted a deadly risk. "Besides," I said, "you're talking out of character, old boy."

He looked at me mildly, steadily, for several moments, as if something about me gave him infinite comfort. It was a man's declaration of love to a man, and as he read the same in my eyes, he closed his own and drowsed.

Though he dozed only at wide intervals and briefly, he asked no more questions until night; then--"Who's with my wife?"

"Mine."

He closed his eyes again, peacefully. It was in keeping with his perfect courtesy not to ask how the new patient was. If she was doing well,--well; and if not, he would spare us the pain of informing or deceiving him.

Senda became a kind of chief-of-staff for both sides of the street. She would have begged to be Mrs. Fontenette's nurse, but for one other responsibility, which we felt it would be unsafe, and she thought it would be unfair, for her to put thus beyond her own reach: "se care of mine hussbandt."

She wore a plain path across the unpaved street to our house, and another to our neighbor's. "Sat iss a too great risk," she compa.s.sionately maintained, "to leaf even in se daytime sose shiltren--so late sick--alone viss only mine hussbandt and se sairvants!"

The doctor was concerned for Mrs. Fontenette from the beginning. "Terribly nervous," he said, "and full from her feet to her eyes, of a terror of death--merely a part of the disease, you know." But in this case I did not know.

"Pathetic," he called the fevered satisfaction she took in the hovering attentions of our old black nurse, who gave us brief respites in the two sick-rooms by turns, and who had according to Mrs. Fontenette, "such a beautiful faith!" The doctor thought it mostly words, among which "de Lawd willin'" so constantly recurred that out of the sick-room he always alluded to her as D.V., though never without a certain sincere regard.

This kind old soul had nursed much yellow fever in her time, and it did not occur to us that maybe her time was past.

When Mrs. Fontenette had been ill something over a week, the doctor one evening made us glad by saying as he came through the little dining-room and jerked a thumb back toward Fontenette's door, "Just keep him as he is for one more night and, I promise you, he'll get well; but!"--He sat down on the couch--Senda's--in the parlor, and pointed at the door to Mrs.

Fontenette's room--"You've got to be careful _how_ you let even that be known--in there! She can get well too--if--" And he went on to tell how in this ailment all the tissues of the body sink into such frail deterioration, that so slight a thing as the undue thrill of an emotion, may rend some inner part of the soul's house and make it hopelessly untenable.

"Iss sat not se condition vhat make it so easy to relapse?" asked Senda.

He said it was, I think, and went his way, little knowing to what a night he was leaving us--except for its celestial beauty, upon which he expatiated as I stepped with him to the gate.

XVIII

He had not been gone long enough for me to get back into the house- Fonteette's--when I espied coming to me, in piteous haste from her home around the corner, the young daughter of another neighbor. Her hair was about her eyes and as she saw the physician had gone, she wrung her hands and burst into violent weeping. I ran to her outside the gate, pointing backward at Mrs. Fontenette's room, with entreating signs for quiet as she called--"Oh, _where_ is he gone? Which way did he go?"

"I can't tell you, my dear girl!" I murmured. "I don't know! What is the trouble?"

"My father!" she hoa.r.s.ely whispered.

"My father's dying! dying in a raging delirium, and we can't hold him in bed! O, come and help us!" She threw her hands above her head in wild despair, and gnawed her fingers and lips and shook and writhed as she gulped down her sobs, and laid hold of me and begged as though I had refused.

I found her words true. It took four men to keep him down. I did not have to stay to the end, and when I reached Fontenette's side again, was glad to find I had been away but little over an hour.

I sent the old black woman home and to bed, and may have sat an hour more, when she came back to tell us, that one of the children was very wakeful and feverish. Senda went to see into the matter for us, and the old woman took her place in the little parlor. Mrs. Smith was with Mrs. Fontenette.

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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sing 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?"

"Ya.s.s, 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? Ya.s.s, sir--awnressless--da.s.s '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; ya.s.s, sih, da.s.s what de Mis' say, too."

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

"Ya.s.s, sih, ef de Lawd wil'--I mean ef you wants me, sih--ya.s.s, 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. Ya.s.s, 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 pa.s.sionate 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