Mrs. Fontenette and the maid silently ran in ahead of me; I went first to
the mother. When I found Mrs. Fontenette again she had the child undressed
and in his crib, and I remembered how often I had, in my heart, called her
a coward.
She saw me pencil on a slip of paper at the mantelpiece, and went and read
-"You mustn't stay. He has the fever. You've never had it."
She wrote beneath--"I should have got it weeks ago if God paid wages every
day. Don't turn me off."
I dropped the paper into the small firegrate, added the other from my
breastpocket, and set them ablaze, and the new maid, entering, praised
burning paper as one of the best deodorizers known.
So my dainty rose-neighbor stayed; stayed all night, and all the next day
and night, and on and on with only flying visits to her home over the way,
until we were amazed at her endurance. The little fellow was never at ease
with her out of his wild eyes. Her touch was balm to him, and her words
peace. Oh, that they might have been healing also! But that was beyond the
reach of all our striving. His days were as the flowers and winged things
of the garden-kingdom, wherein he had been--without ever guessing it--
their citizen-king.
It awakens all the tenderness at once that I ever had for Mrs. Fontenette,
to recall what she was to him in those hours, and to us when his agonies
were all past, and he lay so stately on his short bier, and she could not
be done going to it and looking--looking--with streaming eyes.
As she stood close by the tomb, while we dumbly watched the masons seal
it, I began to believe that she blamed herself for the child's sickness
and death, and presently I knew it must be so. One of those quaint burial
societies of Negro women, in another quarter of the grounds, but within
plain hearing, chose for the ending of their burial service--with what
fitness to their burial service I cannot say, maybe none--a hymn borrowed,
I judge, from the rustic whites, as usual, but Africanized enough to
thrill the dullest nerves; and the moment it began my belief was
confirmed.
My sin is so dahk, Lawd, so dahk and so deep,
My grief is so po', Lawd, so po' and so mean,
I wisht I could weep, Lawd, I wisht I could weep,
Oh, I wisht I could weep like Mary Mahgaleen!
Oh, Sorroh! sweet Sorroh! come, welcome, and stay!
I'd welcome thy swode howsomever so keen,
If I could jes' pray, Lawd, if I could jes' pray,
Oh! if I could jes' pray, like Mary Mahgaleen!
My belief was confirmed, I say; but I was glad to see also that no one
else read as I read the signs by which I was guided. At the cemetery gate
I heard some one call--"Yo' madam is sick, sih," and, turning, saw Mrs.
Fontenette, deathly white, lift her blue eyes to her husband and he get
his arm about her just in time to save her from falling. She swooned but a
moment, and, in the carriage, before it started off, tried to be quite
herself, though very pale.
"It's nothing but the reaction," said to me the lady who fanned her, and
we agreed it was a wonder she had held up so long.
"Hyeh, honey," put in the child's old black nurse, in a voice that never
failed to soothe, however grotesque its misinterpretations, "lay yo' head
on me; an' lay it heavy: dass what I'm use-en to. Blessed is de pyo in
haht; she shall res' in de fea' o' de Lawd, an' he shall lafe at heh
calamity."
I was glad to send the old woman with them, for as we turned away to our
own carriage, I said in my mind, "All that little lady needs is enough
contrition, and she'll give away the total of any secret of which she owns
an undivided half."
But a night and a day passed, and a second, and a third, and I perceived
she had told nothing.
It was a terrible time, with many occasions of suspense more harrowing
than that. Our other children were getting on, yet still needed vigilant
care; the Baron was to be let out of his room in a day or two, but my fat
neighbor had come down with the disease, while his wife still lay between
life and death--how they finally got well, I have never quite made out,
they were so badly nursed--and all about us were new cases, and cases
beyond hope, and retarded recoveries, and relapses, and funerals, and
nurses too few, and ice scarce, and everybody worn out with watching--
physicians compelled to limit themselves to just so many cases at a time,
to avoid utterly breaking down.
As I was in my fat neighbor's sick chamber one evening, giving his nurse a
respite, word came that Fontenette was at my gate. I went to him with
misgivings that only increased as we greeted. He was dejected and
agitated. His grasp was damp and cold.
"It cou'n' stay from me always," he said in an anguished voice, and I
cried in my soul, "She's told him!"
But she had not. I asked him what his bad news was that had come at last,
but his only reply was,
"Can you take _him_? Can you take him out of my house--to-night--this
evening--now?"
"Who, the Baron? Why, certainly, if you desire it?" I responded; wondering
if the entomologist, by some slip, had betrayed _her_. There was an awe in
my visitor's eyes that was almost fright.
"Fontenette," I exclaimed, "what have you heard--what have you done?"
"My frien', 'tis not what I 'ave heard, neitheh what I 'ave done; 'tis
what I 'ave got."
"Got? Why, you've got nothing, you Creole of the Creoles. Your skin's as
cool as mine."
"Feel my pulse," he said. I felt it. It wasn't less than a hundred and
fifty.
"Go, get into bed while I bring the Baron over here," I said, and by the
time I had done this and got back to him his skin was hot enough! An hour
or two after, I recrossed the street on the way to my night's rest,
leaving his wife to nurse him, and Senda to attend on her and keep house.
I paused in the garden and gazed up among the benignant stars. And then I
looked onward, through and beyond their ranks, seemingly so confused, yet
where such amazing hidden order is, and said, for our good Fontenette, and
for his watching wife, and for all of us--even for my wife and me in our
unutterable loss--"Sank Kott! sank Kott! it iss only se yellow fevah!"