LAST DAYS AT GRETNA
The next morning, Madame Jozain sent Raste across the river for Dr.
Debrot, for the sick woman still lay in a heavy stupor, her dull eyes
partly closed, her lips parched and dry, and the crimson flush of fever
burning on cheek and brow.
Before Raste went, Madame Jozain took the traveling bag into the
kitchen, and together they examined its contents. There were the two
baggage-checks, the tickets and money, besides the usual articles of
clothing, and odds and ends; but there was no letter, nor card, nor
name, except the monogram, _J. C._, on the silver fittings, to assist
in establishing the stranger’s identity.
“Hadn’t I better take these,” said Raste, slipping the baggage-checks
into his pocket, “and have her baggage sent over? When she comes to,
you can tell her that she and the young one needed clothes, and you
thought it was best to get them. You can make that all right when she
gets well,” and Raste smiled knowingly at madame, whose face wore an
expression of grave solicitude as she said:
“Hurry, my son, and bring the doctor back with you. I’m so anxious
about the poor thing, and I dread to have the child wake and find her
mother no better.”
When Doctor Debrot entered Madame Jozain’s front room, his head was
not as clear as it ought to have been, and he did not observe anything
peculiar in the situation. He had known madame, more or less, for a
number of years, and he might be considered one of the friends who
thought well of her. Therefore, he never suspected that the young woman
lying there in a stupor was any other than the relative from Texas
madame represented her to be. And she was very ill, of that there
could be no doubt; so ill as to awaken all the doctor’s long dormant
professional ambition. There were new features in the case; the fever
was peculiar. It might have been produced by certain conditions and
localities. It might be contagious, it might not be, he could not say;
but of one thing he was certain, there would be no protracted struggle,
the crisis would arrive very soon. She would either be better or
beyond help in a few days, and it was more than likely that she would
never recover consciousness. He would do all he could to save her, and
he knew Madame Jozain was an excellent nurse; she had nursed with him
through an epidemic. The invalid could not be in better hands. Then
he wrote a prescription, and while he was giving madame some general
directions, he patted kindly the golden head of the lovely child, who
leaned over the bed with her large, solemn eyes fixed on her mother’s
face, while her little hands caressed the tangled hair and burning
cheeks.
“Her child?” he asked, looking sadly at the little creature.
“Yes, the only one. She takes it hard. I really don’t know what to do
with her.”
“Poor lamb, poor lamb!” he muttered, as madame hurried him to the door.
Shortly after the doctor left, there was a little ripple of excitement,
which entered even into the sick-room—the sound of wheels, and Raste
giving orders in a subdued voice, while two large, handsome trunks
were brought in and placed in the corner of the back apartment. These
two immense boxes looked strangely out of place amid their humble
surroundings; and when madame looked at them she almost trembled,
thinking of the difficulty of getting rid of such witnesses should a
day of reckoning ever come. When the little green door closed on them,
it seemed as if the small house had swallowed up every trace of the
mother and child, and that their identity was lost forever.
For several days the doctor continued his visits, in a more or less
lucid condition, and every day he departed with a more dejected
expression on his haggard face. He saw almost from the first that the
case was hopeless; and his heart (for he still had one) ached for the
child, whose wide eyes seemed to haunt him with their intense misery.
Every day he saw her sitting by her mother’s side, pale and quiet,
with such a pitiful look of age on her little face, such repressed
suffering in every line and expression as she watched him for some
gleam of hope, that the thought of it tortured him and forced him to
affect a cheerfulness and confidence which he did not feel. But, in
spite of every effort to deceive her, she was not comforted. She seemed
to see deeper than the surface. Her mother had never recognized her,
never spoken to her, since that dreadful night, and, in one respect,
she seemed already dead to her. Sometimes she seemed unable to control
herself, and would break out into sharp, passionate cries, and implore
her mother, with kisses and caresses, to speak to her—to her darling,
her baby. “Wake up, mama, wake up! It’s Lady Jane! It’s darling! Oh,
mama, wake up and speak to me!” she would cry almost fiercely.
Then, when madame would tell her that she must be quiet, or her
mother would never get well, it was touching to witness her efforts
at self-control. She would sit for hours silent and passive, with her
mother’s hand clasped in hers, and her lips pressed to the feeble
fingers that had no power to return her tender caress.
Whatever was good in Madame Jozain showed itself in compassion for
the suffering little one, and no one could have been more faithful
than she in her care of both the mother and child; she felt such pity
for them, that she soon began to think she was acting in a noble
and disinterested spirit by keeping them with her, and nursing the
unfortunate mother so faithfully. She even began to identify herself
with them; they were hers by virtue of their friendlessness; they
belonged to no one else, therefore they belonged to her; and, in her
self-satisfaction, she imagined that she was not influenced by any
unworthy motive in her treatment of them.
* * * * *
One day, only a little more than a week after the arrival of the
strangers, a modest funeral wended its way through the narrow streets
of Gretna toward the ferry, and the passers stopped to stare at Adraste
Jozain, dressed in his best suit, sitting with much dignity beside Dr.
Debrot in the only carriage that followed the hearse.
“It’s a stranger, a relative of Madame Jozain,” said one who knew. “She
came from Texas with her little girl, less than two weeks ago, and
yesterday she died, and last night the child was taken down with the
same fever, and they say she’s unconscious to-day, so madame couldn’t
leave her to go to the funeral. No one will go to the house, because
that old doctor from the other side says it may be catching.”
That day the Bergeron tomb in the old St. Louis cemetery was opened for
the first time since Madame Jozain’s father was placed there, and the
lovely young widow was laid amongst those who were neither kith nor kin.
When Raste returned from the funeral, he found his mother sitting
beside the child, who lay in the same heavy stupor that marked the
first days of the mother’s illness. The pretty golden hair was spread
over the pillow; under the dark lashes were deep violet shadows, and
the little cheeks glowed with the crimson hue of fever.
Madame was dressed in her best black gown, and she had been weeping
freely. At the sight of Raste in the door, she started up and burst
into heart-breaking sobs.
“Oh, _mon cher_, oh, _mon ami_, we are doomed. Was ever any one so
unfortunate? Was ever any one so punished for a good deed? I’ve taken
a sick stranger into my house, and nursed her as if she were my own,
and buried her in my family tomb, and now the child’s taken down, and
Doctor Debrot says it is a contagious fever, and we may both take it
and die. That’s what one gets in this world for trying to do good!”
“Nonsense, mum, don’t look on the dark side; old Debrot don’t know. I’m
the one that gave it out that the fever was catching. I didn’t want to
have people prying about here, finding out everything. The child’ll
be better or worse in a few days, and then we’ll clear out from this
place, raise some money on the things, and start fresh somewhere else.”
“Well,” said madame, wiping away her tears, much comforted by Raste’s
cheerful view of the situation, “no one can say that I haven’t done my
duty to the poor thing, and I mean to be kind to the child, and nurse
her through the fever whether it’s catching or not. It’s hard to be
tied to a sick bed this hot weather; but I’m almost thankful the little
thing’s taken down, and isn’t conscious, for it was dreadful to see
the way she mourned for her mother. Poor woman, she was so young and
pretty, and had such gentle ways. I wish I knew who she was, especially
now I’ve put her in the Bergeron tomb.”