PROPHETIC.
The look, the air that frets thy sight,
May be a token that below,
The soul has closed in deadly fight
With some eternal fiery foe,
Whose glance would scorch thy smiling grace,
And cast thee, shuddering, on thy face.
Spring in the South is a season of the most enchanting beauty. Forests of odoriferous, blossoming trees, thickets of sweet-scented shrubs, and fields of fragrant wild flowers fill the atmosphere with their delicious perfume; climbing vines twine around the trees and overgrow the fences, transforming them into arbors and to hedges of flowering plants of matchless bloom and fragrance; while myriads of bright-winged birds enliven all the sunny air with their glad melody. It is a season and a scene no lover of nature could look upon without rapture.
But the summer, with its advanced luxuriance of beauty, too often brings malaria, pestilence and death.
The promise of the spring to one in Valentine's condition had been too fair to last for any length of time. Clouds began to gather over his head. First, as Mr. Waring went no longer to town to spend his evenings, it followed as a matter of course that he frequently required Valentine's services at that hour at home. On inquiring for his servant upon these occasions, and receiving the answer that Valentine had gone to town to see his wife, he would grow angry, and exclaim, with an oath:
"I have never had any good of that boy since his foolish marriage. In town every night! This thing is getting to be insufferable, and shall be stopped."
And one morning, when Valentine returned, Mr. Waring told him that he was not to take himself off to see his wife every evening, but that in future he must ask permission to do so.
Now, anger was Valentine's easily besetting sin, the one dangerous internal foe he had constantly to combat. Now, indignation rose and swelled in his bosom. And not from fear or from policy, but from Christian principle, he strove to quell its ragings. He answered only with a bow, and left the room for that silent, solitary struggle with himself that no eye but the Father's ever witnessed. He obeyed the mandate; it was galling, but he obeyed it; and each evening presented himself to his master with something like this style of request, which, as a compromise between asking a permission and intimating a purpose, was not so difficult to make:
"I have got through all my business here for to-day, sir, and am ready to go to town if you don't want me."
"Very well; take yourself off; only be sure to come back early in the morning, to be ready when I rise," would be the frequent answer. "The proud rascal! I believe he would almost as lief die as ask leave to do anything; but it is my own fault; I have treated that boy like a brother, until he is so spoiled as to be quite above his condition," Mr. Waring would add, half jesting, half in earnest.
But sometimes, when Valentine asked, leave would not be granted him; and this occasioned an irregularity in his nightly attendance at the shop, that finally obliged Monsieur Leroux to say to him:
"Valentine, my man, unless you can attend better, I shall have to discharge you altogether, and get a full clerk, which would be better anyway, as he could be here all the time."
Full of trouble at this prospect, Valentine the next day mentioned this to his master, who, happening to be in an ill-humor, answered:
"What the fiend is all that to me, sir? Old Leroux is liable to prosecution for hiring your services at all without a permit."
"But it was in over-hours—in my own time," remonstrated Valentine.
"Your own time! Pray, sir, what time is that? I have yet to learn that you have any time of your own!"
Valentine suppressed his indignation, but that was as much as he could do. He dared not trust himself to reply.
"Leave the room! The sight of you irritates me. And be very thankful that I do not prosecute your friend, old Leroux, with his mulatto clerks and shop-girls! These beasts of Frenchmen have not the slightest idea of the distinctions of race."
Silently, Valentine left the room, to retire and have another wrestle with his pride and anger.
That evening he was not permitted to go to see Fannie; and, from that time the permission to visit her was less and still less frequently granted.
Finally, old Leroux, who had long delayed the step for poor Fannie's sake, hired a clerk, and Valentine lost his over-hour situation, and with it many fair though humble hopes and prospects. He was much depressed; but Fannie bid him do right, trust in God, and cheer up; and said that she would probably get her own salary raised, and that they would get on very well.
Now, whether his marriage had changed his feelings toward Valentine, or whether it was Valentine's marriage that in time and effect grew displeasing to him, or whether both these causes combined to produce an estrangement between the master and the man, I know not; but certainly their mutual relations were changing for the worse. The master grew less considerate and indulgent, and more arrogant and exacting toward his poor servant; and that servant had a daily struggle with his own indignant sense of outraged manhood. Still, Fannie soothed him.
"Govern your temper, dear Valley, and God will bless you. Never mind me and Coralie; we shall get along well enough; and we can see each other Sunday at church, and Thursday at prayer-meeting, anyhow," she would say, cheerfully.
True, Fannie had her baby always with her, and that was a great comfort to the youthful wife and mother for the absence of her husband. They might have looked for some aid from the intercession of Mrs. Waring; but alas! for fair and false hopes, her romantic interest in little Fannie that had been but a frail spring blossom of her own happy bridehood, soon withered; and, added to that, her influence with her husband had waned with her honeymoon. So, between her indifference and her inability, together with her ignorance of the facts—for Valentine seldom had sight or speech alone with his mistress, or, when he had, was too proud and reserved to complain, and Fannie, from native modesty, would rather endure than plead—little aid was to be expected from Mrs. Waring's interference in behalf of the young couple.
The gathering clouds of fate darkened and deepened over the head of the doomed boy. His little home in the city was visited with sickness.
First, his little Coralie was taken ill. No father in this world, whatever his nature or degree might be, ever loved his infant with a more passionate attachment, than poor Valentine felt toward his little Coralie; she was the darling of his heart and eyes, the light and joy of his present, and the hope of his future. It was for her own sake that he wished to save money—to educate her. Daily he thanked God that she was born free.
Now, his bright, beautiful Coralie was pining away under a complication of infant disorders.
A sick and suffering child is one of the most distressing objects in nature, especially when that child is but a babe, and cannot, as the nurses say, "tell where its trouble is," and can only look at you with its pleading eyes, as if imploring the relief you cannot give. You who have ever had an ill and suffering infant, always pining and moaning with its aching head, too heavy for the slender, attenuated neck, dropped upon its nurse's or its mother's shoulder, yet still often looking up with a faint little smile to greet you when you come to take it, or piteously holding out its emaciated arms to coax you back when you are called to leave it—you can estimate the distress of the poor young father, living three miles distant from the sick child, that might at any hour grow suddenly worse, and die; and only permitted to visit it occasionally at the pleasure of others.
Fannie's health, never strong, began to fail; loss of rest night after night, with the sick child, joined to the fatiguing duties of her situation, which she was still obliged to retain as a means of support, exhausted her strength.
The poor infant, bereft all day of both parents, and left in charge of an old, free negress, that lived near the shop, had the sad, unnatural grief of home-sickness added to its other suffering, and so pined and failed day by day.
This state of things lasted for some weeks.
After a night of suffering to the child and sleeplessness to herself, Fannie would rise in the morning, and, though nearly blind, giddy and fainting from habitual loss of rest, she would set her room in order, eat a morsel of breakfast, bathe and dress the little one, collect all the articles it would need, and prepare its food and medicine for the day; and, lastly, dress herself with neatness and taste, for it was very necessary that the shop girl should look as well as possible; take her sick babe in one arm, and its basket of necessaries in the other, lock her door, and set out for the shop, stopping on her way to leave the child and its basket at Aunt Peggy's hut, where there was no cradle or rocking-chair, but, what was perhaps as well, a pallet laid in the coolest part of the room.
Here Fannie would sit and rest a moment, while she nursed her child, and then she would lay it down upon the pallet and leave it, thankful if the little creature happened to be sleeping peacefully, wretched if it chanced to be wakeful and to be wailing after its mother.
One morning, when Fannie had lingered beyond her hour for going to the store, trying to put to sleep or to pacify the suffering child, she finally laid it down upon the pallet, and, with many kisses and soothing words and promises to come back soon, tore herself away; but, just as she reached the door the little one struggled upon its feeble limbs, staggered toward her, and fell, with its weak hand clasping her skirts.
Fannie burst into tears, took the babe up in her arms, sat down upon a chair, and, pressing the little sufferer to her bosom, caressed and soothed it, and promised never to leave it again; and, speaking to the old woman, said:
"Please go over to Leroux's, Aunt Peggy, and tell monsieur that I can't come to-day on account of poor little Coralie; and I don't know when I can come—so he may, if he chooses, look out for somebody else to fill my place."
The prudent old woman expostulated, asked Fannie what she would do for a living if she gave up her situation at Leroux's, and advised her to hold fast, saying that the child might die, and then, there! she couldn't get the place again so easy as she had lost it.
But Fannie was firm. Pressing the infant closer to her bosom, she replied: Yes; that little Coralie might die, and then the thought of how often she had left the poor baby grieving for her mother would break her heart; that it was no use for any one to talk; come what might, she never would leave the sick child again.
Aunt Peggy carried the message, and brought back the reply that Madam Leroux had always expected this trouble to come upon Fannie; that she had always said so; and that Fannie would find her words true, that this was only the beginning of the troubles she would meet, for having been so lost to her own interest as to marry a handsome slave man, whose very hands were not his own, to help her.
Fannie said that she would trust in God, unto death and beyond death; for that often she thought the best way in which He could right His children's wrongs, and comfort their afflictions, was by taking them from this sad world to His own heaven.
Truly, the poor young creature needed all this faith to enable her to bear the troubles that were, and those that were to come. She carried little Coralie back to her own poor room. She sought out what plain sewing and clear starching she could get to do in her own home; but this was very little, now that so many of the ladies and gentlemen among whom she hoped to get employment had left the city for the Northern watering-places. It brought her a very scanty income; and as, out of this, room rent, fuel, light, food, clothing, medicine and other incidental expenses had to be paid, and as, besides, she would not suffer little Coralie to want any comfort, or even any luxury, that she could procure for her by her own exertions and self-denial, it followed, of course, that she herself went without a sufficiency of the real necessaries of life; and so, privation being added to her other ills, accelerated the decline of her health.
Valentine could only come to see them once a week. He would come Sunday morning, spend the day in nursing his darling, tear himself from her clinging baby arms, and return, almost broken-hearted, at night.
This was the condition of things when the yellow fever made its appearance at M——. This was nothing new—the pestilence was no stranger, it was an annual visitor at M——.
But this summer the fever appeared in its most terrible aspect, with all the malign, virulent and fatal characteristics of the plague.
I am not about to harrow your feelings or my own with any minute details of the misery that ensued as the pestilence advanced; of the physical agony, from pain, fever, thirst and famine; of the wretchedness, from bereavement, poverty and desertion; of the mental anguish, from terror, grief, horror and despair. The pestilence brings in its dread train almost every form of physical and moral evil; at the same time, providentially, it calls forth to combat these the most exalted virtues in the human character. You have only to call to mind the ravages of the yellow fever throughout the South in the past to estimate the horrors of the pestilence at M——. The people by hundreds fled the city; those that remained, by thousands died.
The population, reduced to less than one-half, consisted chiefly of the poorer classes, who could not get away, and of those heroic souls whom a high sense of Christian duty or simple humanity had retained in or brought to the scene of misery.
A dense, copper-colored cloud hung low, like a pall, over the plague-stricken city; its air was considered deadly to the newcomer that breathed it.
All intercourse between M—— and the surrounding plantations was interdicted. The greatest anxiety was felt by the planters, lest the fever should break out in their families, or, where it would be more likely to make its first appearance, among the slaves; the greatest precautions were taken to avert such a dread misfortune. The masters and their families confined themselves strictly to their own domains, and the slaves were positively forbidden to approach the city, or even the highways leading thitherward. As many of the neighboring negroes had friends or relatives living in the city, and as their affections are known to be rather obstinate and daring, to insure safety, a voluntary police was organized by the planters, whose duty it was, in turn, to guard the highways, and see that no negro passed without a written permit from the master or mistress.
Preventives of disease and disinfecting agents were diligently sought after. Alcohol, in the form of wine, brandy and whisky, was supposed to be a sovereign safeguard against the pestilence. I do not say that it was laid down as a medical dogma that an habitual inebriate enjoyed immunity from contagion; but I do say, what will probably shock my temperance readers, that all persons were counseled by their physicians to keep themselves always slightly under the influence of alcohol, so long as the pestilence should last. And most people took the advice, finding, at least, something in the half-stimulating, half-stupefying effects of liquor to brave or dull the sense of danger. Wine and brandy were freely used in the planter's family; whisky was freely circulated among the negroes of the plantation. Some among them of the Methodist persuasion and the temperance society demurred at breaking their pledge; but even these, when made to understand that the whisky was to be taken as medicine, by the advice of a physician, felt their consciences set at rest upon the subject, and never was doctor's stuff swallowed with less repugnance than their grog was taken, three times a day.
Valentine held to his principles; he would not break his pledge. In vain for a long time his master, and even his mistress, remonstrated with him.
Circumstances altered cases; times were changed; self-preservation was the first law of nature; in view of the present danger, his pledge was not binding; "for if he kept his pledge, he might lose his life," they would argue.
"That was the Lord's affair; all he had to do was to keep his pledge; and if he should die, so much the better; life had no charms for him," Valentine would reply.
And in truth the wretched young man was much to be compassionated. His wife and child alone and helpless in the midst of the plague, exposed to the united horrors of pestilence, famine and solitary death from desertion; himself forbidden to seek them at their utmost need. Thrice had he escaped and sought the city, and as often had he fallen into the hands of the voluntary police; they did not maltreat him, except inasmuch as they would not suffer him to pass without a permit from his master, and this permit could not be obtained. He could think of nothing but his wife and child. Were they living, and suffering unimagined miseries? Were they among the uncounted dead, whose rude coffins lay one upon another, three or four feet deep, not in graves, but in trenches? He did not even know. But all his thoughts by day, and his fitful dreams by night, were haunted with the forms of Fannie and of Coralie. He saw little Coralie in every phase of memory, and hope, and fear. He saw her bright and beautiful, as she had been in the sweet springtime; he saw her pale and pining, as he had seen her last in her wasting sickness; and he saw her lying dead in her coffin, and woke with a loud cry of anguish. His heart, his spirit, seemed broken.
Seeing his haggard and despairing looks, his mistress expostulated with him, and counseled the use of wine or brandy, saying that the depressing effects of the atmosphere were felt by everybody, even by those living in the country; that it affected all persons with despondency, causing them to look only on the darkest side of all things; and that it was only to be counteracted by the stimulating effects of alcohol.
At last Valentine followed this counsel and took the prescribed "medicine." Not to prevent contagion did he take it, though that purpose would have exonerated him from the charge of a broken pledge; but to dull the poignant sense of suffering, which was greater than he could bear.
Oh, fatal day that he placed again to his lips the maddening glass! All have seen how dangerous is such a relapse. It is generally a sudden and hopeless fall. It was so in the case of this poor fellow. He took the first glass, and, liking its effects, took a second and a third before stopping. If he awoke in the morning to remember his troubles, he drank all day to forget them, and fell at night into a heavy sleep. He zealously followed the medical prescription—nay, he quite overdid it, and kept himself not "slightly" under the influence of alcohol. And in a short space of time, if his master or his mistress remonstrated with him, it was not for total abstinence from intoxicating spirits, but for the opposite extreme of an habitual intemperance. Such was the state of affairs at Red Hill for a few weeks, during which Valentine had no direct or certain intelligence of Fannie and his little child.