So there was nothing to do at Viosca's Point except to rest. Feliu and
all his men were going to Barataria in the morning on business;--the
Doctor could accompany them there, and take the Grand Island steamer
Monday for New Orleans. With this intention Julien retired,--not sorry
for being able to stretch himself at full length on the good bed
prepared for him, in one of the unoccupied cabins. But he woke before
day with a feeling of intense prostration, a violent headache, and such
an aversion for the mere idea of food that Feliu's invitation to
breakfast at five o'clock gave him an internal qualm. Perhaps a touch
of malaria. In any case he felt it would be both dangerous and useless
to return to town unwell; and Feliu, observing his condition, himself
advised against the journey. Wednesday he would have another
opportunity to leave; and in the meanwhile Carmen would take good care
of him ... The boats departed, and Julien slept again.
The sun was high when he rose up and dressed himself, feeling no
better. He would have liked to walk about the place, but felt
nervously afraid of the sun. He did not remember having ever felt so
broken down before. He pulled a rocking-chair to the window, tried to
smoke a cigar. It commenced to make him feel still sicker, and he
flung it away. It seemed to him the cabin was swaying, as the San
Marco swayed when she first reached the deep water.
A light rustling sound approached,--a sound of quick feet treading the
grass: then a shadow slanted over the threshold. In the glow of the
open doorway stood a young girl,--gracile, tall,--with singularly
splendid eyes,--brown eyes peeping at him from beneath a golden riot of
loose hair.
--"M'sieu-le-Docteur, maman d'mande si vous n'avez besoin d'que'que
chose?" ... She spoke the rude French of the fishing villages, where
the language lives chiefly as a baragouin, mingled often with words and
forms belonging to many other tongues. She wore a loose-falling dress
of some light stuff, steel-gray in color;--boys' shoes were on her feet.
He did not reply;--and her large eyes grew larger for wonder at the
strange fixed gaze of the physician, whose face had visibly
bleached,--blanched to corpse-pallor. Silent seconds passed; and still
the eyes stared--flamed as if the life of the man had centralized and
focussed within them.
His voice had risen to a cry in his throat, quivered and swelled one
passionate instant, and failed--as in a dream when one strives to call,
and yet can only moan ... She! Her unforgotten eyes, her brows, her
lips!--the oval of her face!--the dawn-light of her hair! ... Adele's
own poise,--her own grace!--even the very turn of her neck, even the
bird-tone of her speech! ... Had the grave sent forth a Shadow to haunt
him?--could the perfidious Sea have yielded up its dead? For one
terrible fraction of a minute, memories, doubts, fears, mad fancies,
went pulsing through his brain with a rush like the rhythmic throbbing
of an electric stream;--then the shock passed, the Reason
spoke:--"Fool!--count the long years since you first saw her
thus!--count the years that have gone since you looked upon her last!
And Time has never halted, silly heart!--neither has Death stood still!"
... "Plait-il?"--the clear voice of the young girl asked. She thought
he had made some response she could not distinctly hear.
Mastering himself an instant, as the heart faltered back to its duty,
and the color remounted to his lips, he answered her in French:--
"Pardon me!--I did not hear ... you gave me such a start!" ... But even
then another extraordinary fancy flashed through his thought;--and with
the tutoiement of a parent to a child, with an irresistible outburst of
such tenderness as almost frightened her, he cried: "Oh! merciful
God!--how like her! ... Tell me, darling, your name; ... tell me who
you are?" (Dis-moi qui tu es, mignonne;--dis-moi ton nom.)
... Who was it had asked her the same question, in another idiom ever
so long ago? The man with the black eyes and nose like an eagle's
beak,--the one who gave her the compass. Not this man--no!