XVII
At length one day I was called up at dawn and went over to take her place once more, and when after several hours had passed I was still with him, Fontenette said, while I bent down,
"I have the fear thad's going to go hahd with my wife, being of the
Nawth."
"Why, what's going to go hard, old fellow?"
"The feveh. My dear frien', don't I know tha'z the only thing would keep heh f'om me thad long?"
"Still, you don't know her case will be a hard one; it may be very light.
But don't talk now."
"Well—I hope so. Me, I wou'n' take ten thousand dollahs faw thad feveh myself—to see that devotion of my wife. You muz 'ave observe', eh?"
"Yes, indeed, old man; nobody could help observing. I wouldn't talk any more just now."
"No," he insisted, "nobody could eveh doubt. 'Action speak loudeh than word,' eh?"
"Yes, but we don't want either from you just now." I put his restless arms back under the cover; not to keep the outer temperature absolutely even was counted a deadly risk. "Besides," I said, "you're talking out of character, old boy."
He looked at me mildly, steadily, for several moments, as if something about me gave him infinite comfort. It was a man's declaration of love to a man, and as he read the same in my eyes, he closed his own and drowsed.
Though he dozed only at wide intervals and briefly, he asked no more questions until night; then—"Who's with my wife?"
"Mine."
He closed his eyes again, peacefully. It was in keeping with his perfect courtesy not to ask how the new patient was. If she was doing well,—well; and if not, he would spare us the pain of informing or deceiving him.
Senda became a kind of chief-of-staff for both sides of the street. She would have begged to be Mrs. Fontenette's nurse, but for one other responsibility, which we felt it would be unsafe, and she thought it would be unfair, for her to put thus beyond her own reach: "se care of mine hussbandt."
She wore a plain path across the unpaved street to our house, and another to our neighbor's. "Sat iss a too great risk," she compassionately maintained, "to leaf even in se daytime sose shiltren—so late sick—alone viss only mine hussbandt and se sairvants!"
The doctor was concerned for Mrs. Fontenette from the beginning. "Terribly nervous," he said, "and full from her feet to her eyes, of a terror of death—merely a part of the disease, you know." But in this case I did not know.
"Pathetic," he called the fevered satisfaction she took in the hovering attentions of our old black nurse, who gave us brief respites in the two sick-rooms by turns, and who had according to Mrs. Fontenette, "such a beautiful faith!" The doctor thought it mostly words, among which "de Lawd willin'" so constantly recurred that out of the sick-room he always alluded to her as D.V., though never without a certain sincere regard. This kind old soul had nursed much yellow fever in her time, and it did not occur to us that maybe her time was past.
When Mrs. Fontenette had been ill something over a week, the doctor one evening made us glad by saying as he came through the little dining-room and jerked a thumb back toward Fontenette's door, "Just keep him as he is for one more night and, I promise you, he'll get well; but!"—He sat down on the couch—Senda's—in the parlor, and pointed at the door to Mrs. Fontenette's room—"You've got to be careful how you let even that be known—in there! She can get well too—if—" And he went on to tell how in this ailment all the tissues of the body sink into such frail deterioration, that so slight a thing as the undue thrill of an emotion, may rend some inner part of the soul's house and make it hopelessly untenable.
"Iss sat not se condition vhat make it so easy to relapse?" asked Senda.
He said it was, I think, and went his way, little knowing to what a night he was leaving us—except for its celestial beauty, upon which he expatiated as I stepped with him to the gate.