“Where is your master?” said Mr Bang.
“De dactor is in de hose,” replied quashie. “Busha dere upon dying.”
We ascended the rocky unhewn steps, and entered the cool, dark hall, smelling strong of camphor, and slid over the polished floors towards an open door, that led into the back piazza, where we were received by the head book-keeper and carpenter. They told us that the overseer had been seized three days before with fever, and was now desperately ill; and presently the doctor came forth out of the sick-room.
“Poor Wedderfelt is fast going, sir—cold at the extremities already very bad fever—the bilious remittent of the country, of the worst type.”
All this while the servants, male and female, were whispering to each other; while a poor little black fellow sat at the door of the room, crying bitterly—this was the overseer’s servant. We entered the room. which was darkened from the jealousies being, all shut, except one of the uppermost, which happening to be broken, there was a strong pencil of light cast across the head of the bed where the sick man lay while the rest of the room was involved in gloom.
The sufferer seemed in the last stage of yellow fever; his skin was a bright yellow, his nose sharp, and his general features very much pinched. His head had been shaven, and there was a handkerchief bound round it over a plantain leaf, the mark of the blister coming low down on his forehead, where the skin was shrivelled like dry parchment apparently it had not risen. There was also a blister on his chest. He was very restless, clutching the bedclothes, and tossing his limbs about; his mouth was ulcerated, and blood oozed from the corners; his eyes were a deep yellow, with the pupil much dilated, and very, lustrous; he was breathing with a heavy moaning noise when we entered, and looked wildly round, mistaking Mr Bang and me for some other persons. Presently he began to speak very quickly, and to lift one of his hands repeatedly close to his face, as if there was something in it he wished to look at. I presently saw that it held a miniature of a fair haired, blue-eyed Scandinavian girl; but apparently he could not see it, from the increasing dimness of his eyes, which seemed to distress him greatly. After a still minute, during which no sound was heard but his own heavy breathing, he again began to speak very rapidly, but no one in the room could make out what he said. I listened attentively—it struck me is being like—I was certain of it—it was Swedish, which in health he had entirely forgotten, but now in his dying moments vividly remembered. Alas, it was a melancholy and a moving sight, to perceive all the hitherto engrossing thoughts and incidents of his youth and manhood, all save the love of one dear object, suddenly vanish from the tablet of his memory, ground away and abrased, as it were, by his great agony—or like worthless rubbish, removed from above some beautiful ancient inscription, which for ages it had hid, disclosing in all their primeval freshness, sharp cut into his dieing heart, the long smothered, but never to be obliterated impressions of his early, childhood. I could plainly distinguish the name Agatha, whenever he peered with fast glazing eyes on the miniature. All this while a nice little brown child was lying playing with his watch and seals on the bed beside him, while a handsome coloured girl, a slight young creature, apparently its mother, sat on the other side of the dying man, supporting his head on her lap, and wetting his mouth every now and then with a cloth dipped in brandy.
As he raised the miniature to his face, she would gently endeavour to turn away his hand, that he might not look at one whom she, poor thing, no doubt considered was usurping the place in his fluttering heart, that she long fancied had been filled by herself solely; and at other times she would vainly try to coax it out of his cold hand, but the dieing grasp was now one of iron, and her attempts evidently discomposed the departing sinner; but all was done kindly and quietly, and a flood of tears would every now and then stream down her cheeks, as she failed in her endeavours, or as the murmured, gasped name, Agatha, reached her ear.
“Ah!” said she, “him heart riot wid me now—it far away in him own country, him never will make me yeerie what him say again no more.”
Oh, woman, woman! who can fathom that heart of thine! By this time the hiccup grew stronger, and all at once he sat up strong in his bed without assistance, “light as if he felt no wound;” but immediately thereafter gave a strong shudder, ejecting from his mouth a jet of dark matter like the grounds of chocolate, and fell back dead whereupon the negroes began to howl and shriek in such a horrible fashion, that we were glad to leave the scene.
Next day, when we returned to attend the poor fellow’s funeral, we found a complete bivouac of horses and black servants below the trees in front of the house, which was full of neighbouring planters and overseers, all walking about, and talking, and laughing, as if it had been a public meeting on parish business. Some of them occasionally went into the room to look at the body as it lay in the open coffin, the lid of which was at length screwed down, and the corpse carried on four negroes shoulders to its long home, followed by the brown girl and all the servants, the latter weeping and howling,—but she, poor thing, said not a word, although her heart seemed, from the convulsive heaving of her bosom, like to burst. He was buried under a neighbouring orange-tree, the service being read by the Irish carpenter of the estate, who got half a page into the marriage service by mistake before either he or any one else noticed he was wrong.