--"Chita Viosca"
He still watched her face, and repeated the name slowly,--reiterated it
in a tone of wonderment:--"Chita Viosca?--Chita Viosca!"
--"C'est a dire ..." she said, looking down at her
feet,--"Concha--Conchita." His strange solemnity made her smile,--the
smile of shyness that knows not what else to do. But it was the smile
of dead Adele.
--"Thanks, my child," he exclaimed of a sudden,--in a quick, hoarse,
changed tone. (He felt that his emotion would break loose in some wild
way, if he looked upon her longer.) "I would like to see your mother
this evening; but I now feel too ill to go out. I am going to try to
rest a little."
--"Nothing I can bring you?" she asked,--"some fresh milk?"
--"Nothing now, dear: if I need anything later, I will tell your
mother when she comes."
--"Mamma does not understand French very well."
--"No importa, Conchita;--le hablare en Espanol."
--"Bien, entonces!" she responded, with the same exquisite smile.
"Adios, senor!" ...
But as she turned in going, his piercing eye discerned a little brown
speck below the pretty lobe of her right ear,--just in the peachy curve
between neck and cheek.... His own little Zouzoune had a birthmark like
that!--he remembered the faint pink trace left by his fingers above and
below it the day he had slapped her for overturning his ink bottle ...
"To laimin moin?--to batte moin!"
"Chita!--Chita!"
She did not hear ... After all, what a mistake he might have made!
Were not Nature's coincidences more wonderful than fiction? Better to
wait,--to question the mother first, and thus make sure.
Still--there were so many coincidences! The face, the smile, the eyes,
the voice, the whole charm;--then that mark,--and the fair hair.
Zouzoune had always resembled Adele so strangely! That golden hair was
a Scandinavian bequest to the Florane family;--the tall daughter of a
Norwegian sea captain had once become the wife of a Florane.
Viosca?--who ever knew a Viosca with such hair? Yet again, these
Spanish emigrants sometimes married blonde German girls ... Might be a
case of atavism, too. Who was this Viosca? If that was his wife,--the
little brown Carmen,--whence Chita's sunny hair? ...
And this was part of that same desolate shore whither the Last Island
dead had been drifted by that tremendous surge! On a clear day, with a
good glass, one might discern from here the long blue streak of that
ghastly coast ... Somewhere--between here and there ... Merciful God!
...
... But again! That bivouac-night before the fight at
Chancellorsville, Laroussel had begun to tell him such a singular story
... Chance had brought them,--the old enemies,--together; made them
dear friends in the face of Death. How little he had comprehended the
man!--what a brave, true, simple soul went up that day to the Lord of
Battles! ... What was it--that story about the little Creole girl saved
from Last Island,--that story which was never finished? ... Eh! what a
pain!
Evidently he had worked too much, slept too little. A decided case of
nervous prostration. He must lie down, and try to sleep.
These pains in the head and back were becoming unbearable. Nothing but
rest could avail him now.
He stretched himself under the mosquito curtain. It was very still,
breathless, hot! The venomous insects were thick;--they filled the room
with a continuous ebullient sound, as if invisible kettles were boiling
overhead. A sign of storm.... Still, it was strange!--he could not
perspire ...
Then it seemed to him that Laroussel was bending over him--Laroussel in
his cavalry uniform. "Bon jour, camarade!--nous allons avoir un bien
mauvais temps, mon pauvre Julien." How! bad weather?--"Comment un
mauvais temps?" ... He looked in Laroussel's face. There was something
so singular in his smile. Ah! yes,--he remembered now: it was the
wound! ... "Un vilain temps!" whispered Laroussel. Then he was gone
... Whither?
--"Cheri!" ...
The whisper roused him with a fearful start ... Adele's whisper! So she
was wont to rouse him sometimes in the old sweet nights,--to crave some
little attention for ailing Eulalie,--to make some little confidence
she had forgotten to utter during the happy evening ... No, no! It was
only the trees. The sky was clouding over. The wind was rising ...
How his heart beat! how his temples pulsed! Why, this was fever! Such
pains in the back and head!
Still his skin was dry,--dry as parchment,--burning. He rose up; and a
bursting weight of pain at the base of the skull made him reel like a
drunken man. He staggered to the little mirror nailed upon the wall,
and looked. How his eyes glowed;--and there was blood in his mouth!
He felt his pulse spasmodic, terribly rapid. Could it possibly--? ...
No: this must be some pernicious malarial fever! The Creole does not
easily fall a prey to the great tropical malady,--unless after a long
absence in other climates. True! he had been four years in the army!
But this was 1867 ... He hesitated a moment; then,--opening his
medicine chest, he measured out and swallowed thirty grains of quinine.
Then he lay down again. His head pained more and more;--it seemed as
if the cervical vertebrae were filled with fluid iron. And still his
skin remained dry as if tanned. Then the anguish grew so intense as to
force a groan with almost every aspiration ... Nausea,--and the
stinging bitterness of quinine rising in his throat;--dizziness, and a
brutal wrenching within his stomach. Everything began to look
pink;--the light was rose-colored. It darkened more,--kindled with
deepening tint. Something kept sparkling and spinning before his
sight, like a firework ... Then a burst of blood mixed with chemical
bitterness filled his mouth; the light became scarlet as claret ...
This--this was ... not malaria ...