XVIII
He had not been gone long enough for me to get back into the house- Fonteette's—when I espied coming to me, in piteous haste from her home around the corner, the young daughter of another neighbor. Her hair was about her eyes and as she saw the physician had gone, she wrung her hands and burst into violent weeping. I ran to her outside the gate, pointing backward at Mrs. Fontenette's room, with entreating signs for quiet as she called—"Oh, where is he gone? Which way did he go?"
"I can't tell you, my dear girl!" I murmured. "I don't know! What is the trouble?"
"My father!" she hoarsely whispered.
"My father's dying! dying in a raging delirium, and we can't hold him in bed! O, come and help us!" She threw her hands above her head in wild despair, and gnawed her fingers and lips and shook and writhed as she gulped down her sobs, and laid hold of me and begged as though I had refused.
I found her words true. It took four men to keep him down. I did not have to stay to the end, and when I reached Fontenette's side again, was glad to find I had been away but little over an hour.
I sent the old black woman home and to bed, and may have sat an hour more, when she came back to tell us, that one of the children was very wakeful and feverish. Senda went to see into the matter for us, and the old woman took her place in the little parlor. Mrs. Smith was with Mrs. Fontenette.
Fontenette slept. Loath to see him open his eyes, I kept very still, while nearly another hour dragged by, listening hard for Senda's return, but hearing only, once or twice, through the narrow stairway and closets between the two bedrooms, a faint stir that showed Mrs. Fontenette was awake and being waited on.
I was grateful for the rarity of outdoor sounds; a few tree-frogs piped, two or three solitary wayfarers passed in the street; twice or more the sergeant of the night-watch trilled his whistle in a street or two behind us, and twice or more in front; and once, and once again, came the distant bellow of steamboats passing each other—not the famous boats whose whistle you would know one from another, for they were laid up. I doubt if I have forgotten any sound that I noticed that night. I remember the drowsy rumble of the midnight horse-car and tinkle of its mule's bell, first in Prytania street and then in Magazine. It was just after these that at last a black hand beckoned me to the door, and under her breath the old nurse told me she was just back from our house, where her mistress had sent her, and that—"De-eh—de-eh"—
"The Baroness?"
"Yass, sih, de—de outlayndish la-ady—"
Senda had sent word that the child had only an indigestion—a thing serious enough in such a case—and though still slightly feverish was now asleep, but restless.
"Sih? Yass, sir—awnressless—dass 'zac'ly what I say!"
Wherefore Senda would either remain in the nursery or return to us, as we should elect.
"O no, sih, she no need to come back right now, anyhow; yass, sih, dass what de Mis' say, too."
"Then you'll stay here," I whispered.
"Yass, sih, ef de Lawd wil'—I mean ef you wants me, sih—yass, sih, thaynk you, sih. I loves to tend on Mis' Fontenette, she got sich a bu'ful fa aith, same like she say I got. Yass, sih, I dess loves to set an' watch her—wid dat sweet samtimonious fa-ace."
Fontenette being still asleep I gave her my place for a moment, and went to the door between the parlor and his wife's room. Mrs. Smith came to it, barely breathing the triumphant word—"Just dropped asleep!"
When I replied that I would take a little fresh air at the front door she asked if at my leisure I would empty and bring in from the window-sill, around on the garden side of her patient's room a saucer containing the over-sweetened remains of some orange-leaf tea, that "D.V." had made "for to wrench out de nerves." She wanted the saucer.
I went outside a step or two and took in a long draught of good air—the air of a yellow-fever room is dreadful. It was my first breath of mental relief also; almost the first that night, and the last.
I paced once or twice the short narrow walk between the front flower-beds, surprised at their well-kept and blooming condition until I remembered Senda. The moths were out in strong numbers, and it was delightful to forget graver things for a moment and see the flowers bend coyly under their passionate kisses and blushingly rise again when the sweet robbery was finished. So it happened that I came where a glance across to my own garden showed me, on the side farthest from the nursery, a favorite bush, made pale by a light that could come only from the entomologist's window! I went in promptly, told what I proposed to do, and hurried out again.