CHAPTER VLAST DAYS AT GRETNA
Thenext morning, Madame Jozain sent Raste across the river for Dr. Debrot, for the sick woman still lay in a heavy stupor, her dull eyes partly closed, her lips parched and dry, and the crimson flush of fever burning on cheek and brow.
Before Raste went, Madame Jozain took the traveling bag into the kitchen, and together they examined its contents. There were the two baggage-checks, the tickets and money, besides the usual articles of clothing, and odds and ends; but there was no letter, nor card, nor name, except the monogram,J. C., on the silver fittings, to assist in establishing the stranger’s identity.
“Hadn’t I better take these,” said Raste, slipping the baggage-checks into his pocket, “and have her baggage sent over? When she comes to, you can tell her that she and the young one needed clothes, and you thought it was best to get them. You canmake that all right when she gets well,” and Raste smiled knowingly at madame, whose face wore an expression of grave solicitude as she said:
“Hurry, my son, and bring the doctor back with you. I’m so anxious about the poor thing, and I dread to have the child wake and find her mother no better.”
When Doctor Debrot entered Madame Jozain’s front room, his head was not as clear as it ought to have been, and he did not observe anything peculiar in the situation. He had known madame, more or less, for a number of years, and he might be considered one of the friends who thought well of her. Therefore, he never suspected that the young woman lying there in a stupor was any other than the relative from Texas madame represented her to be. And she was very ill, of that there could be no doubt; so ill as to awaken all the doctor’s long dormant professional ambition. There were new features in the case; the fever was peculiar. It might have been produced by certain conditions and localities. It might be contagious, it might not be, he could not say; but of one thing he was certain, there would be no protracted struggle, the crisis would arrive very soon. She would either be betteror beyond help in a few days, and it was more than likely that she would never recover consciousness. He would do all he could to save her, and he knew Madame Jozain was an excellent nurse; she had nursed with him through an epidemic. The invalid could not be in better hands. Then he wrote a prescription, and while he was giving madame some general directions, he patted kindly the golden head of the lovely child, who leaned over the bed with her large, solemn eyes fixed on her mother’s face, while her little hands caressed the tangled hair and burning cheeks.
“Her child?” he asked, looking sadly at the little creature.
“Yes, the only one. She takes it hard. I really don’t know what to do with her.”
“Poor lamb, poor lamb!” he muttered, as madame hurried him to the door.
Shortly after the doctor left, there was a little ripple of excitement, which entered even into the sick-room—the sound of wheels, and Raste giving orders in a subdued voice, while two large, handsome trunks were brought in and placed in the corner of the back apartment. These two immense boxes looked strangely out of place amid their humblesurroundings; and when madame looked at them she almost trembled, thinking of the difficulty of getting rid of such witnesses should a day of reckoning ever come. When the little green door closed on them, it seemed as if the small house had swallowed up every trace of the mother and child, and that their identity was lost forever.
For several days the doctor continued his visits, in a more or less lucid condition, and every day he departed with a more dejected expression on his haggard face. He saw almost from the first that the case was hopeless; and his heart (for he still had one) ached for the child, whose wide eyes seemed to haunt him with their intense misery. Every day he saw her sitting by her mother’s side, pale and quiet, with such a pitiful look of age on her little face, such repressed suffering in every line and expression as she watched him for some gleam of hope, that the thought of it tortured him and forced him to affect a cheerfulness and confidence which he did not feel. But, in spite of every effort to deceive her, she was not comforted. She seemed to see deeper than the surface. Her mother had never recognized her, never spoken to her, since that dreadful night, and, in one respect, she seemed already dead to her.Sometimes she seemed unable to control herself, and would break out into sharp, passionate cries, and implore her mother, with kisses and caresses, to speak to her—to her darling, her baby. “Wake up, mama, wake up! It’s Lady Jane! It’s darling! Oh, mama, wake up and speak to me!” she would cry almost fiercely.
Then, when madame would tell her that she must be quiet, or her mother would never get well, it was touching to witness her efforts at self-control. She would sit for hours silent and passive, with her mother’s hand clasped in hers, and her lips pressed to the feeble fingers that had no power to return her tender caress.
Whatever was good in Madame Jozain showed itself in compassion for the suffering little one, and no one could have been more faithful than she in her care of both the mother and child; she felt such pity for them, that she soon began to think she was acting in a noble and disinterested spirit by keeping them with her, and nursing the unfortunate mother so faithfully. She even began to identify herself with them; they were hers by virtue of their friendlessness; they belonged to no one else, therefore they belonged to her; and, in her self-satisfaction, sheimagined that she was not influenced by any unworthy motive in her treatment of them.
One day, only a little more than a week after the arrival of the strangers, a modest funeral wended its way through the narrow streets of Gretna toward the ferry, and the passers stopped to stare at Adraste Jozain, dressed in his best suit, sitting with much dignity beside Dr. Debrot in the only carriage that followed the hearse.
“It’s a stranger, a relative of Madame Jozain,” said one who knew. “She came from Texas with her little girl, less than two weeks ago, and yesterday she died, and last night the child was taken down with the same fever, and they say she’s unconscious to-day, so madame couldn’t leave her to go to the funeral. No one will go to the house, because that old doctor from the other side says it may be catching.”
That day the Bergeron tomb in the old St. Louis cemetery was opened for the first time since Madame Jozain’s father was placed there, and the lovely young widow was laid amongst those who were neither kith nor kin.
When Raste returned from the funeral, he foundhis mother sitting beside the child, who lay in the same heavy stupor that marked the first days of the mother’s illness. The pretty golden hair was spread over the pillow; under the dark lashes were deep violet shadows, and the little cheeks glowed with the crimson hue of fever.
Madame was dressed in her best black gown, and she had been weeping freely. At the sight of Raste in the door, she started up and burst into heart-breaking sobs.
“Oh,mon cher, oh,mon ami, we are doomed. Was ever any one so unfortunate? Was ever any one so punished for a good deed? I’ve taken a sick stranger into my house, and nursed her as if she were my own, and buried her in my family tomb, and now the child’s taken down, and Doctor Debrot says it is a contagious fever, and we may both take it and die. That’s what one gets in this world for trying to do good!”
“Nonsense, mum, don’t look on the dark side; old Debrot don’t know. I’m the one that gave it out that the fever was catching. I didn’t want to have people prying about here, finding out everything. The child’ll be better or worse in a few days, and then we’ll clear out from this place, raise somemoney on the things, and start fresh somewhere else.”
“Well,” said madame, wiping away her tears, much comforted by Raste’s cheerful view of the situation, “no one can say that I haven’t done my duty to the poor thing, and I mean to be kind to the child, and nurse her through the fever whether it’s catching or not. It’s hard to be tied to a sick bed this hot weather; but I’m almost thankful the little thing’s taken down, and isn’t conscious, for it was dreadful to see the way she mourned for her mother. Poor woman, she was so young and pretty, and had such gentle ways. I wish I knew who she was, especially now I’ve put her in the Bergeron tomb.”