The white Southern stars blazed out. How clean they looked! Zerviah could see them through the window, where the wooden shutter had flapped back. They looked well and wholesome—holy, he thought. He remembered to have heard some one say, at a Sunday meeting he happened into once, years ago, that the word holiness meant health. He wondered what it would be like, to be holy. He wondered what kinds of people would be holy people, say, after a man was dead. Women, he thought,—good women, and honest men who had never done a deadly deed.
He occupied his thoughts in this way. He looked often from the cold stars to the warm lights throbbing in the town. They were both company to him. He began to feel less alone. There was a special service called somewhere in the city that night, to read the prayers for the sick and dying. The wind rose feebly, and bore the sound of the church-bells to the hut. There was a great deal of company, too, in the bells. He remembered that it was Sunday night.
It was Monday, but no one came. It was Tuesday, but the nurse and the plague still battled alone together over the negro. Zerviah’s stock of remedies was as ample as his skill. He had thought he should save Scip. He worked without sleep, and the food was not clean. He lavished himself like a lover over this black boatman; he leaned like a mother over this man who had betrayed him.
But on Tuesday night, a little before midnight, Scip rose, struggling on his wretched bed, and held up his hands and cried out:
“Mr. Hope! Mr. Hope! I never done mean to harm ye!”
“You have not harmed me,” said Zerviah, solemnly. “Nobody ever harmed me but myself. Don’t mind me, Scip.”
Scip put up his feeble hand; Zerviah took it; Scip spoke no more. The nurse held the negro’s hand a long time; the lamp went out; they sat on in the dark. Through the flapping wooden shutter the stars looked in.
Suddenly, Zerviah perceived that Scip’s hand was quite cold.