No sick man could have been better cared for than was the entomologist at
our neighbor's over the way. "The fever," as in the Creole city it used to
be sufficiently distinguished, is not so deadly, nor so treacherous, nor
nearly so repulsive, as some other maladies, but none requires closer
attention. After successive days and nights of unremitting vigilance,
should there occur a momentary closing of the nurse's eyes, or a turning
from the bedside for a quarter of a minute, the irresponsible patient may
attempt to rise and may fall back dying or dead. So, the attendant must
have an attendant. In the case of the entomologist, his wife became the
bedside nurse and sentinel.
In the next room, now and then Mrs. Smith, and now and then our fat
neighbor's wife, waited on her, but by far the most of the time, Mrs.
Fontenette was her assistant. When Senda, while the patient dozed, stole
brief moments of sleep to keep what she could of her overtasked powers,
her place, at the bedside, was always filled by Fontenette, who as often
kept his promise to call her the instant her husband should rouse.
Thus we brought our precious entomologist through the disorder's first
crisis, which generally comes exactly on the seventy-second hour, and in
due time through the second, which falls, if I remember aright, on the
ninth day. What I do recall with certainty, was that it came on one of the
days of the city's heaviest mortality and that two of our children, and my
next neighbor's wife, came down with the scourge.
And O, the beautiful days and the beautiful nights! It seemed the illusion
of a dream, that between such land and sky, there should be not one street
in that embowered city unsmitten by sorrow and death. Out of yonder fair
home on the right, they carried yesterday, the loved mother of five
children--but the Baron is better. From this one on the left, will be
borne to-morrow such a man as no city can lightly spare, till now a living
fulfilment of the word "Be thou clean"--but the entomologist will be ever
so much better.
To be glad of it, you needed only to hear Senda allude to him as "Mine
hussbandt." Why did she never mention him in any other way? The little
woman was a riddle to me. I did not see how she could give such a man such
a love, and yet I never could see but she was as frank as a public record.
Stranger still was it how she could be the marital partner--the mate, to
speak plainly--of such a one, without showing or feeling the slightest
spiritual debasement. Finally, however, I caught some light. I had stepped
over to ask after "Mine hussbandt," everyone else of us being busy with
our own sick. Senda was letting Fontenette take her place in the
sick-room, which, of course, was shut close. I silently entered the room
in front of it, and perceiving that Mrs. Fontenette had drawn her into the
other front room, adjoining--a door stood half open between--and was
tempting her with refreshments, I sat down to await their next move. So
presently I began to hear what they said to each other in their gentle
speculations.
"A wife who has realized her ideal," Mrs. Fontenette was saying, when
Senda interrupted:
"Ah! vhat vife is sat? In vhat part of se vorldt does she lif, and how
long she is marriedt? No-o, no! Sare is only vun _kindt_ of vife in se
_whole_ vorldt vhat realize her ideal hussbandt; and sat is se vife vhat
idealize her real hussbandt. Also not se hussbandt and se vife only; I
sink you even cannot much Christ-yanity practice vis anybody--close
related--vissout you idealize sem. But ze hussbandt and vife--
"You remembeh sat sehmon, 'Be'--O yes, of course. Vell, sat is vun sing se
preacher forget to say--May be he haf not se time, but I sink he forget:
sat sare is no hussbandt in se whole vorldt--and also sare is no vife--so
sp'--spirit'--spirited? no? Ah, yes--spiritual!--yes, sank you. Vhen I
catch me a bigk vord I am so proudt, yet, as I hadt a fish caught!"
I was willing to believe it, but thought how still more true it was of
Mrs. Fontenette. But the gentle speaker had not paused. "Sare iss no vife
so _spiritual_," she repeated, triumphantly, "and who got a hussbandt so
spiritual, sat eeser vun--do you say 'eeser vun'?"
"Either one," said her hostess, reassuringly.
"Yes, so spiritual sat eeser vun can keep sat rule inside--to be pairfect'
clean, if sat vun do not see usseh vun _idealize_."
I made a stir--"Hmm!" Whereupon she came warily to the door. I sat
engrossed in a book and wishing I could silently crawl under it snake
fashion; but I could feel her eyes all over me, and with them was a
glimmering smile that helped them to make me tingle as she softly spoke.
"Ah!--See se book-vorm! He iss all eyes--and ee-ahs. Iss it _not_ so?"
"Pardon," I murmured; "did you spe'--has any one been speaking and I have
failed to give attention?"
"O no, sir! I sink not! Vell, you are velcome to all you haf heardt; but I
am ve'y much oblige' to you for yo' 'hmm.' It vas se right sing in se
right place. But do you not sink I shouldt haf been a pre-eacheh? I love
to preach."
I said I knew of three men in one neighborhood with whom she might start a
church, and asked how was the Baron.
Improving--would soon be able to sit up. She inquired after my children.
It was quite in accord with a late phase of Mrs. Fontenette's demeanor
that on this occasion she did not appear until I mentioned her. She had
not come near me by choice since the night the Baron was found and sent to
my address, although I certainly was in every way as nice to her as I had
ever been, and I was not expecting now to be less so.
When she appeared I asked her if a superb rose blooming late in August was
not worth crossing to our side of the way to see. She knew, of course,
that sooner or later, as the best of a bad choice, she must allow me an
interview; yet now she was about to decline on some small excuse, when her
eyes met mine, and she saw that in my opinion the time had come. So she
made her excuses to her guest and went with me.
She gave the rose generous notice and praise, and as she led the way back
lingered admiringly over flower after flower. Yet she said little; more
than once she paused entirely to let me if I chose change the subject, and
when at the gate I did so, she stood like a captive, looking steadily into
my face with eyes as helpless as a half-fledged bird's and as lovely as
its mother's. When I drew something from my breastpocket, they did not
move.
"This," I said, "is the letter that was found on the Baron the night he
was taken ill. Your husband handed it to me supposing, of course, I had
written it, as it was in one of my envelopes, and he happens not to know
my handwriting. But I did not write it. I had never seen it, yet it was
sent in one of my envelopes. I haven't mentioned it to anyone else,
because--you see?--I hope you do. I thought--well, frankly, I thought if I
should mention it first to you I might never need to mention it to anyone
else." I waited a moment and then asked, eyes and all: "Who could have
sent it?"
"Isn't," she began, but her voice failed, and when it came again it was
hardly more than a whisper, "isn't it signed?"
Now, that was just what I did not know. Whatever the thing was, I had
never taken it from the envelope. But the moment she asked I knew. I knew
it bore no signature. We gazed into each other's eyes for many seconds
until hers tried to withdraw. Then I said--and the words seemed to drop
from my lips unthought--"It didn't have to be signed, Mrs. Fontenette,
although the handwriting is disguised."
Poor Flora! I can but think, even yet, I was kinder than if I had been
kind; but it was brutal, and I felt myself a brute, thus to be holding her
up to herself there on the open sidewalk where she dared not even weep or
wring her hands or hide her face, but only make idle marks on the brick
pavement with her tiny boots--and tremble.
"I--I had to write it," she began to reply, and her words, though they
quivered, were as mechanical as mine. "He was so--so--imprudent--my
husband's happiness required----"
I stopped her. "Please don't say that, Mrs. Fontenette. Pardon me, but--
not that, please." I felt for an instant quite cruel enough to have told
her what ebb tides she had given that husband's happiness; what he had
been so near doing and had been led back from only by the absolute
christliness of that other woman and wife, whose happiness scarcely seemed
ever to have occurred to her; but that was his secret, not mine.
She broke a silence with a suppressed exclamation of pain, while for the
eyes of possible observers I imitated her in a nonchalant pose. "You
wouldn't despise me if you knew the half I've suffered or how I've striv--
--"
I interrupted again. "O Mrs. Fontenette, any true gentleman--at thirty-
five--knows it _all--himself_. And he had better go and cut his throat
than give himself airs, even of pity, over a lady who has made a misstep
she cannot retrace."
Her foot played with a brick that was loose in the pavement, but she gave
me a melting glance of gratitude. After a considerable pause she murmured,
"I will retrace it."
"I have kept you here a good while," I said. "After a moment or so drop
your handkerchief, and as I return it to you the letter will be with it.
Or, better, if you choose to trust me, we'll not do that, but as soon as I
get into the house I'll burn it."
"I can trust you," she replied, "but----"
"What; the Baron--when he misses it? O I'll settle that."
She gave a start as though I had shouted.
I thought it a bad sign for the future, and the words that followed seemed
to me worse. "Isn't it my duty," she asked--and her eyes betrayed
unconsciously the desperateness of her desire--"to explain to him myself?"
I answered with a question. "Would that be in the line of retracement,
Mrs. Fontenette?"
"It would!" she responded, with solemn eagerness. "O it would be! It shall
be! I promise you!"
"Mrs. Fontenette," said I, "consider. If his wife"--she flinched; she
could do so now, for the sudden semi-tropical darkness had fallen--"if his
wife-or your husband"--she bit her lip--"knew all--would they think that
your duty? Would it take them an instant to refuse their consent? Would
they not firmly insist that it is your duty never again to see him alone?"
Her only reply was an involuntary moan and a whitening of the face, and
for the first time I saw how deep into her soul the poison had gone.
"My friend," I continued, "you must not think me meddlesome--officious. I
can no more wait for your permission to help you than if you were
drowning. Perhaps for good reasons within _me_, I know, better than you,
that you-and he--are on a slippery incline, and that whether you can stop
your descent and creep back to higher ground than either of you has
slipped from is not to be told by the fineness of your promises or
resolves. I cannot tell; you cannot tell; only God knows." ...
"Please, sir," said a new maid--in place of one who had gone home fever
struck and had died--"yo' lady saunt me fo' to tell you yo' little boy a
sett'n on de back steps an' sayin' his head does ache him, an' she wish
you'd 'ten' to him, 'caze she cayn't leave his lill' sisteh, 'caze she
threaten with convulsion'."