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.