CHAPTER XXIV.EXPIATION.
ON the following morning Jorge went for the first time in some days to the Department, but he did not remain long. In the street the presence of strangers and of acquaintances was alike irritating to him; he felt as if every one was acquainted with his shame; in the most innocent glance he thought he discovered some secret intention, and in the most friendly hand-clasp a token of sympathy. He returned home in a more morose mood and more weary of life than ever; on entering the hall he heard Luiza singing theMandolinata, as in other times. She was dressing.
“How do you feel?” he asked, putting his cane in a corner.
“Better,—much better; a little weak still.”
Jorge took a few steps up and down the room.
“And you?” she asked.
“So, so,” he answered, in so mournful a tone that she laid down the comb she was using, and going over to him, with her hair hanging loose around her, placed her hands caressingly on his shoulders.
“What is the matter?” she said. “There is something the matter with you. I find you so altered for some days past. You are not the same. At times you look as if you had committed some crime. What is the matter?Tell me!” And her glance sought his, which he turned away in confusion.
She embraced him, and urged him again to tell her what was the matter. She asked him to confide in hislittle wife.
He looked at her fixedly, and suddenly, as if he had just come to a decision,—
“Very well, then,” he said. “I will tell you. You are well now, and you can hear it. Luiza, for the past two weeks I have lived in a hell, and I can endure it no longer! You are well now, is it not so? Well, then, what is the meaning of this? Tell me the truth.” And he held Bazilio’s letter before her eyes.
“What—is it?” she articulated, pale as death, taking the letter in her hand.
She opened the letter, saw Bazilio’s handwriting, and divined everything at a glance; she looked at Jorge for a moment with the gaze of madness, extended her arms mutely, then raised her hands to her head with an uneasy gesture as if she had received a sudden wound, gave a hoarse cry, staggered and fell, first upon her knees, and then full length upon the floor.
Jorge uttered a cry, and the two servants came running in. They laid her on the bed. Jorge told Joanna to run quickly for Sebastião, and stood stupefied beside the bed, gazing at her, while Marianna loosened her mistress’s dress.
Sebastião came at once. There was ether in the house, and they made her inhale it. When she opened her eyes Jorge threw himself down besideher on the bed.
“Speak, Luiza, hear me!” he cried. “I do not doubt you, no! only speak to me. What do you feel?”
At the sound of his voice a convulsive shudder ran through her, and she fainted again. Sebastião went hastily in search of Julião.
Luiza appeared sunk in a stupor, motionless and white as wax, her hands lying helplessly outside the quilt, while two tears rolled slowly down her cheeks. Shortly afterwards a carriage stopped at the door, and Julião entered, out of breath.
“She took ill suddenly, Julião. Come, she is very ill,” cried Jorge, meeting him at the door.
They made her inhale more ether, and she again came to herself. Julião spoke to her while he felt her pulse.
“No, I want no one,” she murmured, drawing away her hand; and she repeated impatiently, “I want no one; go away!”
Her tears continued to flow. They went out of the bedroom, in order not to irritate her, but they soon heard her call,—
“Jorge!”
He went in again, and kneeling down by the bedside, approached his face to hers, saying,—
“What ails you? Come, let us say no more about it; it is past. Don’t get sick. I love you; I swear it to you. Let it be what it will, I don’t want to know it. I want to know nothing.”
Seeing she was about to speak, he laid his hand upon her mouth: “Iwant to hear nothing. I want you to be well—not to suffer. Say you are better. To-morrow we will go to the country and forget it all. It is all past now.”
“Jorge, Jorge,” she murmured, in a choking voice.
“Very well, yes; but now you are going to be happy again. Tell me what you feel?”
“Here!” she answered, raising her hands to her head. “It hurts me!”
Jorge rose to his feet in order to call Julião, but she detained him, and gazing eagerly at him, with feverish eyes, approached her face to his. He bent towards her and pressed on her lips a long, long kiss full of forgiveness.
“Oh, my poor head!” murmured Luiza.
Her temples throbbed violently, and a burning flush suffused her countenance. As she often suffered from headache, Julião did not regard her illness as very serious; he advised absolute repose, and ordered mustard plasters to the feet till he came again. Jorge remained at the bedside, his mind filled with melancholy presentiments; from time to time he sighed profoundly.
Four o’clock struck; a fine rain was falling, a melancholy light filled the apartment.
“This will be nothing!” Sebastião would murmur.
Luiza tossed about on the bed, pressing her head between her hands, tortured by the pain that was momentarily increasing, and burning with thirst.
Marianna went about the room on tiptoe, setting things in order, and wondering at this house in which nothing was to be seen but sickness and sorrow. But even her light steps tortured Luiza as if they wereblows of a hammer upon her skull.
Julião did not remain long away. When he entered the bedroom the aspect of the patient alarmed him. He lighted a match and held it close to her face; the light made her give a scream as if a cold steel had pierced her brain. Her dilated eyes shone with a metallic brilliancy. She lay very still, for the slightest movement caused her horrible pains in the back of her neck. Only from time to time she smiled at Jorge with an expression of mute and resigned wretchedness.
Julião placed three pillows, one above the other, under her head, to keep it elevated. Night was falling without, damp and chill. In Luiza’s room they went about cautiously and on tiptoe; they stopped the monotonous ticking of the clock on the wall. The patient began to moan wearily, and to toss about from side to side with sharp cries of pain; then she would lie motionless, uttering groans of anguish. They had applied mustard plasters, but she did not feel them. Towards nine o’clock she grew delirious; her tongue was dry and of a dirty white color. Julião applied cloths wet in cold water to her head, but her delirium continued to increase. At times she would utter a hoarse and indistinct murmur, in which the names of Leopoldina, Jorge, and Bazilio followed one another in rapid succession; then she would toss her arms wildly, and tear her nightgown with her hands; again she would try to sit up in bed, her eyes rolling in their sockets till only the whites were visible. Then she would remain quiet for a time, smiling with animbecile sweetness; then she would pass her hand caressingly over the quilt with an expression of childish delight. By and by she would begin to gasp for breath, she would mutter some words in a terrified voice, and strive to hide herself among the pillows and bedclothes, as if she were pursued by some frightful phantom; she would press her hands to her head, begging them to open it and relieve her of the weight that tortured her,—to take pity upon her, the tears coursing meanwhile down her cheeks. They put her feet in a hot mustard-bath whose pungent odor filled the room. Jorge poured words of consolation and entreaty into her ear; he supplicated her to be calm, to look at him with recognition in her eyes. Suddenly she flew into a violent passion, demanded her letters, heaped maledictions on Juliana, and in the same breath, in the midst of endearing epithets spoke of sums of money. Jorge feared that in her delirium she would reveal everything to Julião and to the servants, and a cold perspiration covered his brow. At times he would fly like a madman from the room, and throw himself on the sofa in the parlor, sobbing and writhing in anguish.
“Is she in danger?” Sebastião asked Julião.
“Yes,” he answered. “If she had felt the mustard-plasters—but these accursed brain-fevers—”
They were silent on seeing Jorge re-enter the bedroom, his face pale and rigid as that of a corpse. Julião took him by the arm and led him outside. “Listen, we must cut off her hair,” he said.
Jorge gazed at him stupidly.
“Her hair?” he repeated, catching him by the arm. “No, Julião, no;anything else you wish,—you ought to know what is best. But not her hair,—no, no, for the love of Heaven, no! She is not in danger. Why cut off her hair?”
“The mass of hair interferes with the action of the water.”
“To-morrow, if it must be so, to-morrow. Wait until to-morrow, and I will eternally be grateful to you, Julião.”
Julião consented, against his will; but he caused wet cloths to be kept constantly applied to her head. As Marianna’s hand trembled so as to wet the pillow a great deal, Sebastião seated himself at the head of the bed, and let the water drop slowly on her head from a wet sponge all night. So as to have a constant supply of cold water they filled jugs and set them in the balcony. The delirium abated a little during the night, but her bloodshot eyes had a wild aspect and the pupils looked like small black points.
Jorge, seated at the foot of the bed, his head between his hands, kept his face fixed upon her; he recalled vaguely other nights of vigil when she was ill with pneumonia, and recovered. She was even paler then, with a pallor that imparted a softer aspect to her countenance. They would go to the country when she grew better; he would hire a little house, and would go out there in the omnibus every day after business, and watch her waiting for him at the door in the distance as evening was softly falling. Here a moan fell upon his ear, and he raised his eyes, startled. She seemed to him changed; he fancied she was disappearing before his gaze, in the midst of the feverish atmospherethat filled the alcove, the heavy stillness of the night, and the pungent odor of the mustard. He sighed, and returned to his former immobility.
Joanna was praying upstairs. The candles that had burned with a dull flame were going out. At last a faint light threw the shadows of the leaden setting of the window-panes on the white curtains. Day was dawning. Jorge stood up, and going over to the window looked out. The rain had ceased, and the pavements were beginning to dry; the light was gray and misty. Silence reigned over everything. A forgotten towel moved slowly in the cold wind on the balcony of the Azevedos.
Jorge went into the alcove. Luiza was muttering in a gasping voice. She was vaguely conscious of the mustard plasters, but the pain in her head had not abated. She began to toss about in bed, and shortly afterwards the delirium returned. Julião ordered her hair to be cut off at once.
Sebastião went to the Rua da Escola for a hair-cutter, who came at once, the collar of his coat turned up about his ears, and looking half frozen. With fingers greasy with pomade he took slowly out from a little leathern bag the razors and the scissors.
Jorge went into the parlor; he felt as if, with those beautiful locks that were falling one by one under the sharp steel, the edifice of his happiness were falling to the ground stone by stone. With his head clasped between his hands he recalled to mind certain fashions in which she had worn her hair, certain shades it was wont to take in the light. He went back, irresistibly drawn to the alcove; he listened to themetallic sound of the scissors, and his glance fell on a little cup on the table filled with soap-suds, and in which rested a well-worn shaving-brush. He called to Sebastião in a low voice,—
“Tell him to be quick; I am burning at a slow fire; tell him to be quick!”
He went to the dining-room; he wandered restlessly through the house. As the light grew stronger the cold increased; the wind rose, whirling along clouds of gray dust. When he returned to the bedroom the barber was putting away his instruments as slowly as he had taken them out. When this was accomplished he took up his shabby hat and went out on tiptoe, murmuring in lugubrious accents,—
“I shall rejoice to hear of the lady’s recovery. God grant that this may be nothing.”
The delirium passed away at the end of an hour, and Luiza fell into a doze, giving utterance to faint moans that broke from her lips like an inward lament for her ruined life.
Jorge told Sebastião that he would like to call in Dr. Caminha. He was an old physician who had attended Jorge’s mother, and he had brought Luiza safely through an attack of pneumonia in the second year after their marriage. Jorge had retained a grateful admiration for that celebrity of by-gone days, and all his hopes were now fixed on him, as if he were some saint who was to perform the miracle of restoring Luiza to health. Julião deigned his consent, for he regarded the old doctor with esteem, and Sebastião hurriedly went for him to his house.
Luiza, roused for an instant from her lethargy, heard them speaking in low tones, and called to Jorge in a faint voice.
“They have cut off my hair,” she said sorrowfully.
“It is for your good,” said Jorge, looking almost as deathlike as herself. “It will soon grow again and be finer than ever.”
She did not answer; two tears rolled slowly down her cheeks.
This must have been her last sensation. The prostration of coma had begun to paralyze her faculties; from time to time her head moved gently on the pillow; she moaned continually, in a gasping voice; her face grew gradually paler, and the noises in the street failed to produce any impression on her senses. At noon Donna Felicidade made her appearance; she was struck dumb at seeing Luiza so ill, when she had come with the intention of carrying her off to the Encarnação, and even to the shops. She took off her hat and installed herself in the house. She caused the alcove to be put in order, had the mustard plasters and the various articles used during Luiza’s illness put away, and arranged the bed, for there was nothing worse for a sick person, she said, than an untidy bedroom; and she bravely strove to inspire Jorge with courage.
A carriage stopped at the door; it was Dr. Caminha at last. He came in, his throat enveloped in a green-and-black check muffler, complaining of the cold, and slowly drawing off his gloves, which he placed methodically inside his hat. He advanced to the alcove with measured step, smoothing down with his hand the few gray hairs brushed flatagainst his head. Julião remained alone with him in the alcove, while the others waited outside in silence with Jorge, who was pale as wax, with eyes like lighted coals.
“We are going to put a blister on the back of her neck,” said Julião, coming out of the room.
Jorge devoured Dr. Caminha with his eyes as the latter, putting on his gloves, said,—
“We shall see the result of the blister. She is very ill now, and she may be worse. I will return, my friend; I will return.”
The blister was useless; she did not feel it; she lay pallid and motionless, with drawn features, and the nerves of the face twitching convulsively.
“There is no hope,” said Julião to Sebastião, in a low voice.
Donna Felicidade was seized with terror, and began to talk of the “rites of the church.”
“What for?” growled Julião, impatiently.
Donna Felicidade declared that she had scruples of conscience, that it was a mortal sin; and calling Jorge over to the window, she said to him in a trembling voice, “Don’t be frightened, Jorge; but it would be well to think of the rites of the church.”
“The rites of the church!” repeated Jorge in terror.
Julião interposed abruptly, in an accent of irritation:
“Let us have no nonsense! What is the use of sacraments, if she neither hears, nor understands, nor feels? It is necessary to put on another caustic, perhaps to cup her. These are the only sort of sacraments that are of any avail here.”
But Donna Felicidade was shocked, and began to cry.
“You forget God, and there is no hope for her but in him,” she said, blowing her nose noisily.
“And what does God do for me?” exclaimed Jorge, roused from his stupor and throwing out his hands as if in protest against an injustice. “What have I ever done that this should happen to me? What have I ever done?”
Julião ordered another blister. Confusion reigned in the house. Joanna came into the room, when no one looked for her, with some broth that no one had asked for, her eyes red with weeping. Marianna sobbed in corners. Donna Felicidade came and went, shut herself up in the parlor to pray, made vows to the saints, and considered whether it might not be well to call in Dr. Barbosa or Dr. Barral.
Luiza meantime remained motionless; the livid hue of her features imparted to them a rigid and swollen appearance.
Julião, faint with hunger, asked for a glass of wine and a piece of bread. Then they remembered that they had not eaten anything since the previous day, and they went to the dining-room. Joanna, her eyes swimming in tears, placed some soup and eggs on the table, but she gave them neither plates nor spoons; she alternately murmured a prayer and asked them to excuse her. Jorge, meantime, his swollen eyes fixed on the edge of the table, with contracted features, nervously twisted his napkin in his hands. After a little he left the table and went downstairs to the bedroom. Marianna was seated at the foot of the bed.Jorge sent her upstairs, telling her to go wait on the table; and as soon as she was gone, falling upon his knees by the bedside, he took one of Luiza’s hands in his and began to speak to her, first in a low voice and then more loudly,—
“Listen, hear me, for the love of God. Do not remain thus; try to get better. Don’t leave me alone in this world, for I believe in no other. Forgive me, tell me that you forgive me; give me some sign that you do. She does not hear me, my God!”
And he looked at her with an expression of anguish on his countenance. Then raising his arms wildly,—
“Thou knowest that I believe in thee, my God,” he cried. “Save her! save her!” And lifting up his soul to Heaven, he continued: “Hear me, my God! Listen to me. Be merciful!”
He gazed and gazed, waiting for a movement, a voice, a miracle. But everything seemed to him more still than before. The livid countenance began to sink in. He placed his hand with cowardly vacillation upon her head, from which the wet cloth had partly fallen; it was cold. He smothered a cry, ran out of the room, and stumbled against Dr. Caminha, who was entering, taking off his gloves with deliberation.
“Doctor, she is dead! She does not speak; she is cold!” he cried.
“Let us see, let us see,” responded the doctor. “Softly, softly!”
He took Luiza’s hand, and felt her pulse escaping under his fingers like the expiring vibration of a chord.
Julião arrived shortly afterwards, and he agreed with Dr. Caminha that the cupping was useless.
“She would not feel it,” added the doctor, shaking the snuff from his fingers.
“What if we were to give her a little brandy?” said Julião suddenly. And he added, on seeing the look of astonishment on the doctor’s face, “At times these symptoms of coma do not signify that the brain is disorganized; it may be inaction of the nervous force. If death is inevitable nothing is lost; and if it is only a depression of the nervous system, she may be saved.”
Dr. Caminha shook his head incredulously.
“Theories,” he murmured.
“In the English hospitals—” began Julião.
Caminha shrugged his shoulders with contempt.
“If the doctor would only read—” Julião insisted.
“I read nothing,” said Caminha, raising his voice. “My books are my patients.” And he added with an ironical bow, “Nevertheless, if my intelligent colleague wishes to make the trial—”
“A glass of brandy or whiskey!” called out Julião from the door of the bedroom.
Caminha seated himself tranquilly, to enjoy the discomfiture of his “intelligent colleague.”
They raised Luiza’s head, and Julião made her swallow a little of the brandy. When they laid her back again in bed, she remained in the same condition of comatose immobility as before. Dr. Caminha took out his watch, looked at it, and waited. An anxious silence reigned. At last the doctor rose, felt the pulse of the patient, and noted the increasing coldness of the extremities; then he took his hat, withoutspeaking, and began to draw on his gloves.
Jorge went out with him, and catching him forcibly by the arm, said,—
“Well, Doctor?”
“Everything is being done that can be done,” said the old man, shrugging his shoulders.
Jorge remained at the head of the stairs, stupefied, watching the doctor go down; his slow footsteps, as he went down step by step, resounded dolorously in Jorge’s heart. He leaned over the banister and called to him softly. The doctor paused and looked up. Jorge followed him.
“Then—there is no hope?” he said in a voice of mingled humbleness and entreaty.
The doctor made a vague gesture and pointed toward heaven.
Jorge returned to the alcove, supporting himself along the wall. He knelt down at the foot of the bed, and remained there, his head buried in his arms, sobbing quietly.
Luiza was dying. Her beautiful arms, that she had so often caressed before the looking-glass, were already paralyzed; her eyes, that had flamed with passion or shone humid with pleasure, were sunken in their sockets. Donna Felicidade and Marianna had placed a lighted lamp before an engraving of the Virgin of Sorrows, and were praying on their knees. Twilight was falling sadly, and seemed to bring with it a funereal silence. The bell rang discreetly, and a few moments afterwards the countenance of the Counsellor Accacio appeared at the bedroom, door. Donna Felicidade rose to her feet, and on seeing her tears thecounsellor said,—
“I come to perform a duty,—to accompany you on this sad occasion.”
He said he had met the good Dr. Caminha by chance, and that he had informed him of the dreadful event. But he had no wish to enter the alcove. He sat down in a chair, rested his elbow sorrowfully on his knee, and his head in his hand, saying in a low voice to Donna Felicidade,—
“Go on with your prayers. The designs of God are inscrutable!”
In the alcove Julião felt Luiza’s pulse and glanced at Sebastião, making a gesture with his hand as of something about to vanish.
They approached Jorge, who was motionless on his knees, his face buried in the bedclothes.
“Jorge,” whispered Sebastião to him, almost inaudibly.
He raised his face, that looked haggard and aged; his hair hung in disorder over his forehead, and dark rings were about his eyes.
“Come away,” said Julião. And he added, seeing the terror depicted on Jorge’s countenance, “No, she is not dead; she is still in the same lethargic condition. Come.”
Jorge rose, and answered with gentleness,—
“Yes; I am going. There is nothing the matter with me—thanks.” And he left the alcove.
The counsellor rose, and embraced him with solemnity, saying,—
“I am here, dear Jorge.”
“Thanks, Counsellor, thanks.”
He took a few steps up and down the room; from time to time he glanced uneasily at a package that was on the table; he took it up, opened it slightly, and saw Luiza’s hair; he looked at it, passing it from one hand to the other, and said, kissing it tenderly, “She took such pride in it, my darling!”
He returned to the alcove, but Julião took him by the hand and sought to draw him away. He resisted gently, and pointing to a candle that was on the little table by the bed, said,—
“Perhaps the light troubles her.”
“She can no longer see it, Jorge,” said Julião, deeply moved.
Jorge drew his hand from Julião’s clasp and threw himself on Luiza’s body; he caught her head between his hands, gazed at it a moment with exquisite tenderness, then kissed her cold lips twice, murmuring, “Good-by, good-by!”
He rose to his feet, extended his arms, and fell to the floor, senseless. They hastened to him, lifted him up, and laid him on the sofa. And while Donna Felicidade, drowned in tears, closed Luiza’s eyes, the counsellor, his hat still in his hand, folded his arms, and shaking his respectable bald head, said to Sebastião,—
“What a terrible misfortune for our Jorge!”