XIV
No sick man could have been better cared for than was the entomologist at our neighbor's over the way. "The fever," as in the Creole city it used to be sufficiently distinguished, is not so deadly, nor so treacherous, nor nearly so repulsive, as some other maladies, but none requires closer attention. After successive days and nights of unremitting vigilance, should there occur a momentary closing of the nurse's eyes, or a turning from the bedside for a quarter of a minute, the irresponsible patient may attempt to rise and may fall back dying or dead. So, the attendant must have an attendant. In the case of the entomologist, his wife became the bedside nurse and sentinel.
In the next room, now and then Mrs. Smith, and now and then our fat neighbor's wife, waited on her, but by far the most of the time, Mrs. Fontenette was her assistant. When Senda, while the patient dozed, stole brief moments of sleep to keep what she could of her overtasked powers, her place, at the bedside, was always filled by Fontenette, who as often kept his promise to call her the instant her husband should rouse.
Thus we brought our precious entomologist through the disorder's first crisis, which generally comes exactly on the seventy-second hour, and in due time through the second, which falls, if I remember aright, on the ninth day. What I do recall with certainty, was that it came on one of the days of the city's heaviest mortality and that two of our children, and my next neighbor's wife, came down with the scourge.
And O, the beautiful days and the beautiful nights! It seemed the illusion of a dream, that between such land and sky, there should be not one street in that embowered city unsmitten by sorrow and death. Out of yonder fair home on the right, they carried yesterday, the loved mother of five children—but the Baron is better. From this one on the left, will be borne to-morrow such a man as no city can lightly spare, till now a living fulfilment of the word "Be thou clean"—but the entomologist will be ever so much better.
To be glad of it, you needed only to hear Senda allude to him as "Mine hussbandt." Why did she never mention him in any other way? The little woman was a riddle to me. I did not see how she could give such a man such a love, and yet I never could see but she was as frank as a public record. Stranger still was it how she could be the marital partner—the mate, to speak plainly—of such a one, without showing or feeling the slightest spiritual debasement. Finally, however, I caught some light. I had stepped over to ask after "Mine hussbandt," everyone else of us being busy with our own sick. Senda was letting Fontenette take her place in the sick-room, which, of course, was shut close. I silently entered the room in front of it, and perceiving that Mrs. Fontenette had drawn her into the other front room, adjoining—a door stood half open between—and was tempting her with refreshments, I sat down to await their next move. So presently I began to hear what they said to each other in their gentle speculations.
"A wife who has realized her ideal," Mrs. Fontenette was saying, when
Senda interrupted:
"Ah! vhat vife is sat? In vhat part of se vorldt does she lif, and how long she is marriedt? No-o, no! Sare is only vun kindt of vife in se whole vorldt vhat realize her ideal hussbandt; and sat is se vife vhat idealize her real hussbandt. Also not se hussbandt and se vife only; I sink you even cannot much Christ-yanity practice vis anybody—close related—vissout you idealize sem. But ze hussbandt and vife—
"You remembeh sat sehmon, 'Be'—O yes, of course. Vell, sat is vun sing se preacher forget to say—May be he haf not se time, but I sink he forget: sat sare is no hussbandt in se whole vorldt—and also sare is no vife—so sp'—spirit'—spirited? no? Ah, yes—spiritual!—yes, sank you. Vhen I catch me a bigk vord I am so proudt, yet, as I hadt a fish caught!"
I was willing to believe it, but thought how still more true it was of Mrs. Fontenette. But the gentle speaker had not paused. "Sare iss no vife so spiritual," she repeated, triumphantly, "and who got a hussbandt so spiritual, sat eeser vun—do you say 'eeser vun'?"
"Either one," said her hostess, reassuringly.
"Yes, so spiritual sat eeser vun can keep sat rule inside—to be pairfect' clean, if sat vun do not see usseh vun idealize."
I made a stir—"Hmm!" Whereupon she came warily to the door. I sat engrossed in a book and wishing I could silently crawl under it snake fashion; but I could feel her eyes all over me, and with them was a glimmering smile that helped them to make me tingle as she softly spoke.
"Ah!—See se book-vorm! He iss all eyes—and ee-ahs. Iss it not so?"
"Pardon," I murmured; "did you spe'—has any one been speaking and I have failed to give attention?"
"O no, sir! I sink not! Vell, you are velcome to all you haf heardt; but I am ve'y much oblige' to you for yo' 'hmm.' It vas se right sing in se right place. But do you not sink I shouldt haf been a pre-eacheh? I love to preach."
I said I knew of three men in one neighborhood with whom she might start a church, and asked how was the Baron.
Improving—would soon be able to sit up. She inquired after my children.
It was quite in accord with a late phase of Mrs. Fontenette's demeanor that on this occasion she did not appear until I mentioned her. She had not come near me by choice since the night the Baron was found and sent to my address, although I certainly was in every way as nice to her as I had ever been, and I was not expecting now to be less so.
When she appeared I asked her if a superb rose blooming late in August was not worth crossing to our side of the way to see. She knew, of course, that sooner or later, as the best of a bad choice, she must allow me an interview; yet now she was about to decline on some small excuse, when her eyes met mine, and she saw that in my opinion the time had come. So she made her excuses to her guest and went with me.
She gave the rose generous notice and praise, and as she led the way back lingered admiringly over flower after flower. Yet she said little; more than once she paused entirely to let me if I chose change the subject, and when at the gate I did so, she stood like a captive, looking steadily into my face with eyes as helpless as a half-fledged bird's and as lovely as its mother's. When I drew something from my breastpocket, they did not move.
"This," I said, "is the letter that was found on the Baron the night he was taken ill. Your husband handed it to me supposing, of course, I had written it, as it was in one of my envelopes, and he happens not to know my handwriting. But I did not write it. I had never seen it, yet it was sent in one of my envelopes. I haven't mentioned it to anyone else, because—you see?—I hope you do. I thought—well, frankly, I thought if I should mention it first to you I might never need to mention it to anyone else." I waited a moment and then asked, eyes and all: "Who could have sent it?"
"Isn't," she began, but her voice failed, and when it came again it was hardly more than a whisper, "isn't it signed?"
Now, that was just what I did not know. Whatever the thing was, I had never taken it from the envelope. But the moment she asked I knew. I knew it bore no signature. We gazed into each other's eyes for many seconds until hers tried to withdraw. Then I said—and the words seemed to drop from my lips unthought—"It didn't have to be signed, Mrs. Fontenette, although the handwriting is disguised."
Poor Flora! I can but think, even yet, I was kinder than if I had been kind; but it was brutal, and I felt myself a brute, thus to be holding her up to herself there on the open sidewalk where she dared not even weep or wring her hands or hide her face, but only make idle marks on the brick pavement with her tiny boots—and tremble.
"I—I had to write it," she began to reply, and her words, though they quivered, were as mechanical as mine. "He was so—so—imprudent—my husband's happiness required——"
I stopped her. "Please don't say that, Mrs. Fontenette. Pardon me, but— not that, please." I felt for an instant quite cruel enough to have told her what ebb tides she had given that husband's happiness; what he had been so near doing and had been led back from only by the absolute christliness of that other woman and wife, whose happiness scarcely seemed ever to have occurred to her; but that was his secret, not mine.
She broke a silence with a suppressed exclamation of pain, while for the eyes of possible observers I imitated her in a nonchalant pose. "You wouldn't despise me if you knew the half I've suffered or how I've striv— —"
I interrupted again. "O Mrs. Fontenette, any true gentleman—at thirty- five—knows it all—himself. And he had better go and cut his throat than give himself airs, even of pity, over a lady who has made a misstep she cannot retrace."
Her foot played with a brick that was loose in the pavement, but she gave me a melting glance of gratitude. After a considerable pause she murmured, "I will retrace it."
"I have kept you here a good while," I said. "After a moment or so drop your handkerchief, and as I return it to you the letter will be with it. Or, better, if you choose to trust me, we'll not do that, but as soon as I get into the house I'll burn it."
"I can trust you," she replied, "but——"
"What; the Baron—when he misses it? O I'll settle that."
She gave a start as though I had shouted.
I thought it a bad sign for the future, and the words that followed seemed to me worse. "Isn't it my duty," she asked—and her eyes betrayed unconsciously the desperateness of her desire—"to explain to him myself?"
I answered with a question. "Would that be in the line of retracement,
Mrs. Fontenette?"
"It would!" she responded, with solemn eagerness. "O it would be! It shall be! I promise you!"
"Mrs. Fontenette," said I, "consider. If his wife"—she flinched; she could do so now, for the sudden semi-tropical darkness had fallen—"if his wife-or your husband"—she bit her lip—"knew all—would they think that your duty? Would it take them an instant to refuse their consent? Would they not firmly insist that it is your duty never again to see him alone?"
Her only reply was an involuntary moan and a whitening of the face, and for the first time I saw how deep into her soul the poison had gone.
"My friend," I continued, "you must not think me meddlesome—officious. I can no more wait for your permission to help you than if you were drowning. Perhaps for good reasons within me, I know, better than you, that you-and he—are on a slippery incline, and that whether you can stop your descent and creep back to higher ground than either of you has slipped from is not to be told by the fineness of your promises or resolves. I cannot tell; you cannot tell; only God knows." …
"Please, sir," said a new maid—in place of one who had gone home fever struck and had died—"yo' lady saunt me fo' to tell you yo' little boy a sett'n on de back steps an' sayin' his head does ache him, an' she wish you'd 'ten' to him, 'caze she cayn't leave his lill' sisteh, 'caze she threaten with convulsion'."