On the nineteenth day succeeding that of her landing, my auramentee was detained until a late hour in the evening at his place of business, and was hastening to pay a short visit to his protégés, when he was intercepted by a messenger from a friend who had been suddenly prostrated with an attack of the coast fever, who urged him to make haste as the symptoms threatened a fatal issue. We found the doctor in attendance on our arrival, who accepted a thought suggestion, and on the supposition that it was his own, adopted the recommendation, which served to relieve his patient from the fatal tendency, thereby relieving my auramentee from his apprehensions, in time to fulfill his first intentions. This fever scourge of Brazil differs from the yellow type of northern latitudes; as in Rio, during the first stages of accession, it is exceedingly erratic; suddenly appearing in one department to rage with deadly vigor for a few days, and then in apparent transfer, subsiding, to reënact in a remote district its fatal ravages. At a later period of its sway, when the partially exhausted venom has become more generally dispersed, it flits hither and thither with demon activity, fastening upon its prey without premonitory symptoms, perceptible to curative observation, devoted to empirical treatment, although distinctly visible in inceptive cause to our censors. Even with coincident cause and effect clearly exposed for detection in current transfer, the Giga physicians utterly ignore ante-investigation, for prevising the means of prevention. This observance of limits, overleaping adjoining, to locate itself in remote districts, gives plain indication of local infecting agency, and we discover that the fermentable cause was overlooked, and allowed to exhaust itself in putrefactive dissemination. With this hint, in recurring attestation of the fatuous fatalism that will ever attend the curative devisements of humanity, while they neglect the means of prevention, we will resume our demonstration in narrative vindication of the axiom, that remedy is inherent with the cause.
But a few minutes had passed, after the auramentee had reached his hotel, before he was summoned to the house of his Italian protégés. On our arrival we found the mother in the height of the febrile stage of the plague’s accession, but calm and resigned in thought, although impressed with a premonition of the disease’s fatality, which with our knowledge we felt that it was impossible to avert, still we suggested remedies for transient relief. With the morning’s dawn, after soothing the anxious fears of her children, she expressed to them her desire to converse with the auramentee alone. Notwithstanding the unusual nature of the request, it was cheerfully complied with. She then related to him the cause of her husband’s estrangement and desertion, affirming that her sole object in following him was for his rescue from self-inflicted wretchedness, as she had brought with her a feeling of fatality, that warned her that her own and children’s days were numbered. This feeling had been confirmed in her mind by the strange sympathy which had been shown in her behalf, as the source of her sorrows was only known to an appreciative few. We used all our powers of persuasion to induce a more hopeful mood, by endeavoring to convince her that she was yielding to superstitious feelings unworthy of the courage which had sustained her through the trials of desertion, and her long search which had been continued in a manner humiliating to the affectionate pride of a mother in behalf of her children, exhorting her to bear up bravely until she had achieved the object of her mission. With a wailing sigh, quickly suppressed, she averted her face, while with choked utterance, scarcely raised above a whisper, she despairingly murmured, “I have seen him.”
Surprise, mingled with an oppressive sorrow, held us speechless; for words of sympathy, however pure in expression, would have added to the pangs of her agonized affection, which seemed already struggling for liberation from the body, held back by her children’s love; but divided, and bereaved of the sentient unity of her affection, grief overshadowed and dimmed her assurance of a happy immortality. A silence of many minutes followed, unbroken save by convulsed sobs, which she vainly tried to suppress; at last a flood from the fount of tears enabled her to regain self-command, but only to be borne back for the realization of deeper woe. Her children, with anxious solicitation for the revival of fond memories, had caught the reflection of their mother’s lullaby, with which she had soothed them in dawning infancy, when with undimmed eyes she had breathed her affection in song. Then no cloud had arisen to darken with its gloom the joys of her wedded life. The daughter had been encouraged, with guided hands, to touch the strings of the harp during the period of toddling babyhood, when from feeble, faltering incertitude an answering response came to the mother’s leading song. Soon her tiny fingers, instructed by a retentive memory, enabled her to render with remarkable accuracy the most difficult compositions within the compass of her reach. The sadly harmonious memorial that had opened with renewed anguish the fount of the mother’s tears, was the sleep requiem early impressed on the daughter’s dawning memory. Commencing with an imitative prelude, suggestive of childhood’s hesitating touch, accompanied with her brother’s violin, the various canzanatas were modulated with the far-off lisp of invocation, as if from dawning perception, intuitively increasing in volume until it reached the flowing harmony of present maturity. From the joyous expression of childhood’s buoyancy, the strain suddenly changed into the sad wailing of uncertainty, improvised with mournful variations descriptive of their wanderings and disappointments. Again, in renewal, as if led by some inspiration beyond their control, they reached their present source of sorrow. The burden of the plaintive strains was frequently interrupted with sobbing outbursts, rendering their touch tremulous and uncertain, the efforts made for suppression being easily detected by hesitations, which they endeavored to cover with bolder movements. Recovering, as if with the sudden impression of hopeful assurance, there came a stream of melody of inconceivable purity, as from an echo of futurity bearing in waft joyful gladness. This change caused the mother to whisper, with tears fresh flowing over a sadly joyous expression, “I would have so, it is our requiem.”
With the lullaby, that was improvised in quick succession, the mother again clasped her hands convulsively, while the spasmodic workings of her compressed lips and trembling eyelids bespoke the inward struggle made to suppress the gathering strength of her emotions. But with the rehearsal of the melodious symphonies of the halcyon days of united love, grief found vent in an abundant flow of tears, which called forth from the auramentee stifled throbs of masculine sympathy. But while the melodies were growing more earnest in the sad sweetness of their expression, the strain suddenly ceased with the startled cry of, “Father!”
The mother sprang from the bed, but with tottering dizziness fell back, still retaining her consciousness with a placid expression, which despite the ashy paleness of the face bespoke the full consummation of earthly hopes. The children gently opening the door led in the wretched father, upon whose features were imprinted with haggard remorse the interwoven lines of despair. Blind with the searing touch of hopeless shame, he passed the auramentee unnoticed; then pressed down by the remorseful revival of first affection, he knelt at the bedside and was enfolded in his wife’s arms. Not a syllable had been spoken save the word, father, and the auramentee feeling that his voice and presence would prove alike embarrassing, quietly withdrew.
Five hours later, while crossing the palace plaza on his return from a walk on the Botofogian beach, we met the husband hastening back to his house of refuge and partner in disgrace. Although evidently bracing himself for the utmost exertion of his powers of resistance and speed, in opposition to the foe whose seal was legibly visible in the ashy paleness of his face, the wavering uncertainty of his steps betokened speedy prostration. The natives, accustomed to the symptoms, detected the cause of his swaying progress, and held their course as far to the windward as possible, following his movements with eyes subject to the instinctive fascination that a person under the doom of deadly infection attracts. Becoming fully impressed with his condition from increasing weakness, and the fixed stare of the passers-by, who avoided him, his steps faltered and a momentary shadow of dismay caused a wavering of his eyes and lips; but in quick revulsion he again braced himself, with a determination that bespoke the energetic self-possession of the Englishman in extremity. Leaning against the palace wall, which he had reached, he hastily buttoned his coat to his throat, then drawing in his breath resolutely, he again started forward with a defiant stride. But he was in the deadly grasp of a foe who toyed with his mortal powers as relentlessly in sacrificial oblation, as he had with the ties of affection. This fact his tottering steps soon betrayed, for in despite of his desperate struggles he sank back in a half kneeling and leaning position against a pediment of stone, in transition for the tower of a neighboring church, while its priest passed by on the other side hastily crossing himself and muffling his face with aversion.
The imploring language of his eyes, which he cast around with beseeching entreaty for help, moved even the stolid pity of the natives to unwonted activity, causing them to start in search of the brotherhood in charge of the department. But the auramentee, forgetful of the unfortunate’s great wrong, gave him supporting assistance, while urging with his voice the necessity for the utmost exertion of self-determination. Pointing to the Hotel des Estrangeiros he made an effort to take from his pocket a card partially in view. Understanding his wish, the auramentee took it, adding to its anticipated intention in his own handwriting, “sick with the fever,” dispatched it by a kindly hand to its destination. Scarcely five minutes elapsed before a female form darted from the portal and directed her steps in wild dismay to the stricken one’s side, and kneeling claimed the support of his head, while with a kiss she supplicated, “Oh, Edward, what can I do?” A faint smile lighted his face at this appeal, as he whispered the ever abiding talismanic word, “home,” so dear to the honest attachments of instinct, however much misused in collateral signification. The auramentee then entreated him to muster all the energy possible in aid of their support. Raising him with great difficulty to an upright position upon his feet, all his efforts to walk proved abortive, but a kind-hearted Frenchman who was passing, volunteered his aid to bear the doomed bodily to his hotel and bed. By profession a nurse, the Frenchman undertook the patient’s charge, after he was placed in bed, but gave no hopes of his recovery; on the contrary, with the coolness of a physician, urged him to use quick dispatch if he wished to dispose of anything by his will for the living advantage of others, as it was impossible for him to live longer than two or three hours.
A smile, with the answering words, “It is well,” aroused the anguished despair of the being, who still ministered with all absorbing thought her tender care and caresses, bringing forth the expostulation, “Oh, Edward, Edward, if you go, you must not leave me! for wherever you go, I must go with you!”
The dying man raised his eyes to hers with a look of unutterable fondness, then, with mustered energy, whispered: “Julia, it is hard to part from you, after so much suffering. But living, it would prove to us both a continued scene of remorseful misery, without the possibility of atonement, while dying, I have gloomy forebodings that there will be for us no future. Yet, whatever may come after death, it is better that I should die as the cause, than live as the renewed source of misery to others.”
Such a look of despairing desolation as she cast upon her expiring lover I had never before seen depicted upon the face of Giga woman. Her beauty, surpassing, in fair unblemishing complexion those of kindred type, was refined by the hopeless anguish of its expression, which in its passionless void betokened, as with him, a reviving hope struggling for the bodily retrievement of an assured immortality. At the expiration of an hour, her arm that supported his head grew lax and nerveless; but his efforts to raise himself recalled her thoughts for his assistance. Perceiving that it was his desire to be left alone with her, while he yet retained his consciousness, the auramentee was prompted to inform him of his kindly attentions bestowed upon his wife and children, as it offered the opportunity of affording mutual consolation, by conveying to his wife and children some affectionate token or message. The announcement revived his energies, imparting to his “allovee” a kindred impression of desire. Beckoning the auramentee nearer, in earnest, whispered accents, he implored him to plead with his wife, Julia’s forgiveness, as the “sin” of desertion was wholly his own. “Say to her,” he continued, “that it was my own unencouraged infatuation; against which she, loving, did all that she could to resist my entreaties, striving earnestly in the toils to escape from me and ‘love’s’ allurements. She is not wanton, but pure and devoted as a wife can be, although misguided. It is my own ‘heart’ that is divided, even in death, which makes me feel doubly thankful for its nearer rescue.”