Slowly the hours of night wore away, and as the moon rose higher and higher in the heavens, her rays fell upon the bowed form of Rosa, who, with clasped hands and bloodless cheeks, sat just where first we saw her—praying—weeping—thinking, and praying again, until at last there came over her troubled spirit, a calm, which ere long, resolved itself into a fixed determination. “She would tell him all—how she loved Richard Delafield, and how, though that love were hopeless, she could not call another her husband.” And he would release her—she knew he would. “But if he should not?” seemed whispered in her ear. For an instant her heart stood still, and then she answered aloud, “I will not do this great wickedness and sin against both God and man.”
It was strange how calm this resolution made her. Rising up from the crouching posture she had assumed in the first abandonment of her grief, she walked to the open window, where she stood gazing out upon the starry sky, until at last, sick and faint with the sweet perfume of the night air, she turned away, and shuddering, she knew not why, sought her pillow. It was now the first of June, and in that southern clime the air was already hot, sultry, and laden with disease. For two weeks a fearful epidemic, whose nature the oldest physicians did not understand, had been raging in the towns adjoining, and many who in the morning rose up full of life and vigor, were in the evening no longer numbered among the living, so rapid was the work of death. In great alarm the terrified inhabitants had fled from place to place, but the destroyer was on their tract and the “brain fever,” as it was termed, claimed them for its victims.
As yet, there had been no cases in W——, but the people were in daily dread of its arrival, and a feeling of gloom pervaded the village. Mrs. Lansing, on the contrary, though usually alarmed, even at the mention of a contagious disease, expressed no fear, and went on with the preparations for the party, unconscious of the dark cloud hovering near. But when on the morning succeeding the night of which we have spoken, she heard, in passing Rosa’s door the sound of some one talking incoherently, while at the same time a negro girl came rushing out, exclaiming, “The Lord help us—young Miss has now got the brain fever, and gone ravin’ mad,” she fled in wild alarm to the farthest extremity of the building, and gathering her frightened children together, with Ada, around her, she called to the terrified servants from the window, bidding them go for her brother and tell him as he valued his life not to venture near the infected room, but to hasten with all speed to her. And there, trembling, weeping, and wringing her hands in fear, the selfish, cold-hearted woman stayed, while parched with fever and thirst, the suffering girl lay moaning in her pain; now asking for water to cool her burning brain, and again clasping her thin, white hands convulsively upon her brow, as if to still its agonized throbbings.
But one there was who did not forget. In her excitement Mrs. Lansing failed to notice the absence of little Jessie, who going fearlessly to the bedside of her beloved teacher, gently bathed the aching head, and administered the cooling draught, while with childish love she kissed the ashen lips, and smoothed back the long tresses which floated over the pillow. In the hall below there was the sound of footsteps, and the bridegroom’s voice was heard, asking for his bride, but his cheek blanched to a marble whiteness when told that she was dying in the chamber above. In a moment he had her in his arms—his precious Rose—dying—dying—he believed, for he, too, had heard of the strange disease, and he thought there was no hope. With a bitter cry, he bent over the unconscious girl, who knew him not, for the light of reason was obscured and darkness was upon her vision.
“Can nothing be done? Is there no help?” he exclaimed wildly, and little Jessie, awed by his grief, answered, as she laid her soft, white hand on Rosa’s forehead, “God can help her, and maybe Uncle Dick can. I mean to go for him,” and gliding noiselessly from the room, she was soon on her way to Sunny Bank, looking, with her golden curls floating over her bare white shoulders, as is she were indeed an angel of mercy.
Alone in his library sat Richard Delafield, his arms resting upon the table, and his face buried in his hands. All the night long he had sat there thus, musing sadly of the future when she would be gone, and he should be alone. Why had she crossed his path—that little, humble girl, and why had he been permitted to love her so madly, or to dream of a time when he could call her “his own, his Rose, his wife.” Again and again he repeated those words to himself, and then as he thought whose she would be when another sun should have set, he groaned aloud, and in despairing tones cried out, “How can I give her up!”
The sun had risen, and, struggling through the richly curtained window, fell upon his bowed head, but he did not heed it. He was sleeping at last, and in his dreams another than Dr. Clayton had claimed Rose for his bride, even Death, and without a tear he laid her in her coffin, and buried her where the soft sighing cedar and the whispering pine would overshadow her grave. From that dream he was roused by Jessie, who shrieked in his ear, “Wake, Uncle Dick, and come. Miss Lee is dying with the fever, and there is nobody to help her.”
For a time the selfish part of Richard Delafield’s nature gained the ascendant, and he said aloud, “Thank God! Rather thus than the bride of another.”
Still this feeling did not prevent him from action, and with a firm step and composed manner he went with Jessie to Cedar Grove, going immediately to Rosa’s chamber, where, for a moment, he stood appalled at the scene before him. She had fearfully changed since last he saw her, for the disease had advanced with rapid strides, and now utterly insensible, and white as the wintry snow, she lay with her head thrown back, and her lips apart, while her hands nervously picked at the bed-clothes around her! Many a time had Dr. Clayton heard that this was a sure omen of death, and though he had ever laughed at it as an old woman’s whim, he shuddered now as he saw it in her, and bowing his head upon the pillow, he wept like a child. For a moment Richard Delafield stood gazing upon the apparently dying girl and the weeping man, who seemed wholly incapable of action; then rousing himself, he went in quest of the black women, commanding them in a voice they dared not disobey to come at once to the sick-room. He had heard that nothing but violent and continual perspiration had as yet been of any avail in such extreme cases, and calmly giving orders to that effect, he himself assisted while the hemlock and the bottles of hot water were applied, then, administering a powerful tonic, he bade Jessie go for her mother, while he took his station at the bedside to watch the result.