Persistently and furiously, at half-past two o'clock of an August
morning, Sparicio rang Dr. La Brierre's night-bell. He had fifty
dollars in his pocket, and a letter to deliver. He was to earn another
fifty dollars--deposited in Feliu's hands,--by bringing the Doctor to
Viosca's Point. He had risked his life for that money,--and was
terribly in earnest.
Julien descended in his under-clothing, and opened the letter by the
light of the hall lamp. It enclosed a check for a larger fee than he
had ever before received, and contained an urgent request that he would
at once accompany Sparicio to Viosca's Point,--as the sender was in
hourly danger of death. The letter, penned in a long, quavering hand,
was signed,--"Henry Edwards."
His father's dear old friend! Julien could not refuse to go,--though
he feared it was a hopeless case. Angina pectoris,--and a third attack
at seventy years of age! Would it even be possible to reach the
sufferer's bedside in time? "Due giorno,--con vento,"--said Sparicio.
Still, he must go; and at once. It was Friday morning;--might reach
the Point Saturday night, with a good wind ... He roused his
housekeeper, gave all needful instructions, prepared his little
medicine-chest;--and long before the first rose-gold fire of day had
flashed to the city spires, he was sleeping the sleep of exhaustion in
the tiny cabin of a fishing-sloop.
... For eleven years Julien had devoted himself, heart and soul, to the
exercise of that profession he had first studied rather as a polite
accomplishment than as a future calling. In the unselfish pursuit of
duty he had found the only possible consolation for his irreparable
loss; and when the war came to sweep away his wealth, he entered the
struggle valorously, not to strive against men, but to use his science
against death. After the passing of that huge shock, which left all
the imposing and splendid fabric of Southern feudalism wrecked forever,
his profession stood him in good stead;--he found himself not only able
to supply those personal wants he cared to satisfy, but also to
alleviate the misery of many whom he had known in days of
opulence;--the princely misery that never doffed its smiling mask,
though living in secret, from week to week, on bread and orange-leaf
tea;--the misery that affected condescension in accepting an invitation
to dine,--staring at the face of a watch (refused by the Mont-de-Piete)
with eyes half blinded by starvation;--the misery which could afford
but one robe for three marriageable daughters,--one plain dress to be
worn in turn by each of them, on visiting days;--the pretty
misery--young, brave, sweet,--asking for a "treat" of cakes too
jocosely to have its asking answered,--laughing and coquetting with its
well-fed wooers, and crying for hunger after they were gone. Often and
often, his heart had pleaded against his purse for such as these, and
won its case in the silent courts of Self. But ever mysteriously the
gift came,--sometimes as if from the hand of a former slave; sometimes
as from a remorseful creditor, ashamed to write his name. Only yellow
Victorine knew; but the Doctor's housekeeper never opened those
sphinx-lips of hers, until years after the Doctor's name had
disappeared from the City Directory...
He had grown quite thin,--a little gray. The epidemic had burthened
him with responsibilities too multifarious and ponderous for his
slender strength to bear. The continual nervous strain of abnormally
protracted duty, the perpetual interruption of sleep, had almost
prostrated even his will. Now he only hoped that, during this brief
absence from the city, he might find renewed strength to do his
terrible task.
Mosquitoes bit savagely; and the heat became thicker;--and there was
yet no wind. Sparicio and his hired boy Carmelo had been walking
backward and forward for hours overhead,--urging the vessel yard by
yard, with long poles, through the slime of canals and bayous. With
every heavy push, the weary boy would sigh out,--"Santo Antonio!--Santo
Antonio!" Sullen Sparicio himself at last burst into vociferations of
ill-humor:--"Santo Antonio?--Ah! santissimu e santu diavulu! ...
Sacramentu paescite vegnu un asidente!--malidittu lu Signuri!" All
through the morning they walked and pushed, trudged and sighed and
swore; and the minutes dragged by more wearily than the shuffling of
their feet. "Managgia Cristo co tutta a croce!" ... "Santissimu e
santu diavulu!" ...
But as they reached at last the first of the broad bright lakes, the
heat lifted, the breeze leaped up, the loose sail flapped and filled;
and, bending graciously as a skater, the old San Marco began to shoot
in a straight line over the blue flood. Then, while the boy sat at the
tiller, Sparicio lighted his tiny charcoal furnace below, and prepared
a simple meal,--delicious yellow macaroni, flavored with goats' cheese;
some fried fish, that smelled appetizingly; and rich black coffee, of
Oriental fragrance and thickness. Julien ate a little, and lay down to
sleep again. This time his rest was undisturbed by the mosquitoes; and
when he woke, in the cooling evening, he felt almost refreshed. The
San Marco was flying into Barataria Bay. Already the lantern in the
lighthouse tower had begun to glow like a little moon; and right on the
rim of the sea, a vast and vermilion sun seemed to rest his chin. Gray
pelicans came flapping around the mast;--sea-birds sped hurtling by,
their white bosoms rose-flushed by the western glow ... Again
Sparicio's little furnace was at work,--more fish, more macaroni, more
black coffee; also a square-shouldered bottle of gin made its
appearance. Julien ate less sparingly at this second meal; and smoked
a long time on deck with Sparicio, who suddenly became very
good-humored, and chatted volubly in bad Spanish, and in much worse
English. Then while the boy took a few hours' sleep, the Doctor helped
delightedly in maneuvering the little vessel. He had been a good
yachtsman in other years; and Sparicio declared he would make a good
fisherman. By midnight the San Marco began to run with a long,
swinging gait;--she had reached deep water. Julien slept soundly; the
steady rocking of the sloop seemed to soothe his nerves.
--"After all," he thought to himself, as he rose from his little bunk
next morning,--"something like this is just what I needed." ... The
pleasant scent of hot coffee greeted him;--Carmelo was handing him the
tin cup containing it, down through the hatchway. After drinking it he
felt really hungry;--he ate more macaroni than he had ever eaten
before. Then, while Sparicio slept, he aided Carmelo; and during the
middle of the day he rested again. He had not had so much
uninterrupted repose for many a week. He fancied he could feel himself
getting strong. At supper-time it seemed to him he could not get
enough to eat,--although there was plenty for everybody.
All day long there had been exactly the same wave-crease distorting the
white shadow of the San Marco's sail upon the blue water;--all day long
they had been skimming over the liquid level of a world so jewel-blue
that the low green ribbon-strips of marsh land, the far-off fleeing
lines of pine-yellow sand beach, seemed flaws or breaks in the
perfected color of the universe;--all day long had the cloudless sky
revealed through all its exquisite transparency that inexpressible
tenderness which no painter and no poet can ever reimage,--that
unutterable sweetness which no art of man may ever shadow forth, and
which none may ever comprehend,--though we feel it to be in some
strange way akin to the luminous and unspeakable charm that makes us
wonder at the eyes of a woman when she loves.
Evening came; and the great dominant celestial tone deepened;--the
circling horizon filled with ghostly tints,--spectral greens and grays,
and pearl-lights and fish-colors ... Carmelo, as he crouched at the
tiller, was singing, in a low, clear alto, some tristful little melody.
Over the sea, behind them, lay, black-stretching, a long low arm of
island-shore;--before them flamed the splendor of sun-death; they were
sailing into a mighty glory,--into a vast and awful light of gold.
Shading his vision with his fingers, Sparicio pointed to the long lean
limb of land from which they were fleeing, and said to La Brierre:--
--"Look-a, Doct-a! Last-a Islan'!"
Julien knew it;--he only nodded his head in reply, and looked the other
way,--into the glory of God. Then, wishing to divert the fisherman's
attention to another theme, he asked what was Carmelo singing.
Sparicio at once shouted to the lad:--
--"Ha! ... ho! Carmelo!--Santu diavulu! ... Sing-a loud-a! Doct-a
lik-a! Sing-a! sing!" .... "He sing-a nicee,"--added the boatman, with
his peculiar dark smile. And then Carmelo sang, loud and clearly, the
song he had been singing before,--one of those artless Mediterranean
ballads, full of caressing vowel-sounds, and young passion, and
melancholy beauty:--
"M'ama ancor, belta fulgente,
Come tu m'amasti allor;--
Ascoltar non dei gente,
Solo interroga il tuo cor." ...
--"He sing-a nicee,--mucha bueno!" murmured the fisherman. And then,
suddenly,--with a rich and splendid basso that seemed to thrill every
fibre of the planking,--Sparicio joined in the song:--
"M'ama pur d'amore eterno,
Ne deilitto sembri a te;
T'assicuro che l'inferno
Una favola sol e." ...
All the roughness of the man was gone! To Julien's startled fancy, the
fishers had ceased to be;--lo! Carmelo was a princely page; Sparicio, a
king! How perfectly their voices married together!--they sang with
passion, with power, with truth, with that wondrous natural art which
is the birthright of the rudest Italian soul. And the stars throbbed
out in the heaven; and the glory died in the west; and the night opened
its heart; and the splendor of the eternities fell all about them.
Still they sang; and the San Marco sped on through the soft gloom, ever
slightly swerved by the steady blowing of the southeast wind in her
sail;--always wearing the same crimpling-frill of wave-spray about her
prow,--always accompanied by the same smooth-backed swells,--always
spinning out behind her the same long trail of interwoven foam. And
Julien looked up. Ever the night thrilled more and more with silent
twinklings;--more and more multitudinously lights pointed in the
eternities;--the Evening Star quivered like a great drop of liquid
white fire ready to fall;--Vega flamed as a pharos lighting the courses
ethereal,--to guide the sailing of the suns, and the swarming of fleets
of worlds. Then the vast sweetness of that violet night entered into
his blood,--filled him with that awful joy, so near akin to sadness,
which the sense of the Infinite brings,--when one feels the poetry of
the Most Ancient and Most Excellent of Poets, and then is smitten at
once with the contrast-thought of the sickliness and selfishness of
Man,--of the blindness and brutality of cities, whereinto the divine
blue light never purely comes, and the sanctification of the Silences
never descends ... furious cities, walled away from heaven ... Oh! if
one could only sail on thus always, always through such a
night--through such a star-sprinkled violet light, and hear Sparicio
and Carmelo sing, even though it were the same melody always, always
the same song!
... "Scuza, Doct-a!--look-a out!" Julien bent down, as the big boom,
loosened, swung over his head. The San Marco was rounding into
shore,--heading for her home. Sparicio lifted a huge conch-shell from
the deck, put it to his lips, filled his deep lungs, and flung out into
the night--thrice--a profound, mellifluent, booming horn-tone. A
minute passed. Then, ghostly faint, as an echo from very far away, a
triple blowing responded...
And a long purple mass loomed and swelled into sight, heightened,
approached--land and trees black-shadowing, and lights that swung ...
The San Marco glided into a bayou,--under a high wharfing of timbers,
where a bearded fisherman waited, and a woman. Sparicio flung up a
rope.
The bearded man caught it by the lantern-light, and tethered the San
Marco to her place. Then he asked, in a deep voice:
--"Has traido al Doctor?"
--"Si, si!" answered Sparicio... "Y el viejo?"
--"Aye! pobre!" responded Feliu,--"hace tres dias que esta muerto."
Henry Edwards was dead!
He had died very suddenly, without a cry or a word, while resting in
his rocking-chair,--the very day after Sparicio had sailed. They had
made him a grave in the marsh,--among the high weeds, not far from the
ruined tomb of the Spanish fisherman. But Sparicio had fairly earned
his hundred dollars.