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 passed 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; nobody could help observing. I wouldn't talk any
more just now."
"No," he insisted, "nobody 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 compassionately
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.