Chita: a Memory of Last Island Part 7

And this was part of that same desolate sh.o.r.e whither the Last Island dead had been drifted by that tremendous surge! On a clear day, with a good gla.s.s, one might discern from here the long blue streak of that ghastly coast ... Somewhere--between here and there ... Merciful G.o.d!

... But again! That bivouac-night before the fight at Chancellorsville, Laroussel had begun to tell him such a singular story ... Chance had brought them,--the old enemies,--together; made them dear friends in the face of Death. How little he had comprehended the man!--what a brave, true, simple soul went up that day to the Lord of Battles! ... What was it--that story about the little Creole girl saved from Last Island,--that story which was never finished? ... Eh! what a pain!

Evidently he had worked too much, slept too little. A decided case of nervous prostration. He must lie down, and try to sleep.

These pains in the head and back were becoming unbearable. Nothing but rest could avail him now.

He stretched himself under the mosquito curtain. It was very still, breathless, hot! The venomous insects were thick;--they filled the room with a continuous ebullient sound, as if invisible kettles were boiling overhead. A sign of storm.... Still, it was strange!--he could not perspire ...

Then it seemed to him that Laroussel was bending over him--Laroussel in his cavalry uniform. "Bon jour, camarade!--nous allons avoir un bien mauvais temps, mon pauvre Julien." How! bad weather?--"Comment un mauvais temps?" ... He looked in Laroussel's face. There was something so singular in his smile. Ah! yes,--he remembered now: it was the wound! ... "Un vilain temps!" whispered Laroussel. Then he was gone ... Whither?

--"Cheri!" ...

The whisper roused him with a fearful start ... Adele's whisper! So she was wont to rouse him sometimes in the old sweet nights,--to crave some little attention for ailing Eulalie,--to make some little confidence she had forgotten to utter during the happy evening ... No, no! It was only the trees. The sky was clouding over. The wind was rising ...

How his heart beat! how his temples pulsed! Why, this was fever! Such pains in the back and head!

Still his skin was dry,--dry as parchment,--burning. He rose up; and a bursting weight of pain at the base of the skull made him reel like a drunken man. He staggered to the little mirror nailed upon the wall, and looked. How his eyes glowed;--and there was blood in his mouth!

He felt his pulse spasmodic, terribly rapid. Could it possibly--? ...

No: this must be some pernicious malarial fever! The Creole does not easily fall a prey to the great tropical malady,--unless after a long absence in other climates. True! he had been four years in the army!

But this was 1867 ... He hesitated a moment; then,--opening his medicine chest, he measured out and swallowed thirty grains of quinine.

Then he lay down again. His head pained more and more;--it seemed as if the cervical vertebrae were filled with fluid iron. And still his skin remained dry as if tanned. Then the anguish grew so intense as to force a groan with almost every aspiration ... Nausea,--and the stinging bitterness of quinine rising in his throat;--dizziness, and a brutal wrenching within his stomach. Everything began to look pink;--the light was rose-colored. It darkened more,--kindled with deepening tint. Something kept sparkling and spinning before his sight, like a firework ... Then a burst of blood mixed with chemical bitterness filled his mouth; the light became scarlet as claret ...

This--this was ... not malaria ...

VI.

... Carmen knew what it was; but the brave little woman was not afraid of it. Many a time before she had met it face to face, in Havanese summers; she knew how to wrestle with it; she had torn Feliu's life away from its yellow clutch, after one of those long struggles that strain even the strength of love. Now she feared mostly for Chita.

She had ordered the girl under no circ.u.mstances to approach the cabin.

Julien felt that blankets had been heaped upon him,--that some gentle hand was bathing his scorching face with vinegar and water. Vaguely also there came to him the idea that it was night. He saw the shadow-shape of a woman moving against the red light upon the wall;--he saw there was a lamp burning.

Then the delirium seized him: he moaned, sobbed, cried like a child,--talked wildly at intervals in French, in English, in Spanish.

--"Mentira!--you could not be her mother ... Still, if you were--And she must not come in here,--jamais! ... Carmen, did you know Adele,--Adele Florane? So like her,--so like,--G.o.d only knows how like! ... Perhaps I think I know;--but I do not--do not know justly, fully--how like! ... Si! si!--es el vomito!--yo lo conozco, Carmen! ...

She must not die twice ... I died twice ... I am going to die again.

She only once. Till the heavens be no more she will not rise ... Moi, au contraire, il faut que je me leve toujours! They need me so much;--the slate is always full; the bell will never stop. They will ring that bell for me when I am dead ... So will I rise again!--resurgam! ... How could I save him?--could not save myself. It was a bad case,--at seventy years! ... There! Qui ca?" ...

He saw Laroussel again,--reaching out a hand to him through a whirl of red smoke. He tried to grasp it, and could not ... "N'importe, mon ami," said Laroussel,--"tu vas la voir bientot." Who was he to see soon?--"qui done, Laroussel?" But Laroussel did not answer. Through the red mist he seemed to smile;--then pa.s.sed.

For some hours Carmen had trusted she could save her patient,--desperate as the case appeared to be. His was one of those rapid and violent attacks, such as often despatch their victims in a single day. In the Cuban hospitals she had seen many and many terrible examples: strong young men,--soldiers fresh from Spain,--carried panting to the fever wards at sunrise; carried to the cemeteries at sunset. Even troopers riddled with revolutionary bullets had lingered longer ... Still, she had believed she might save Julien's life: the burning forehead once began to bead, the burning hands grew moist.

But now the wind was moaning;--the air had become lighter, thinner, cooler. A stone was gathering in the east; and to the fever-stricken man the change meant death ... Impossible to bring the priest of the Caminada now; and there was no other within a day's sail. She could only pray; she had lost all hope in her own power to save.

Still the sick man raved; but he talked to himself at longer intervals, and with longer pauses between his words;--his voice was growing more feeble, his speech more incoherent. His thought vacillated and distorted, like flame in a wind.

Weirdly the past became confounded with the present; impressions of sight and of sound interlinked in fastastic affinity,--the face of Chita Viosca, the murmur of the rising storm. Then flickers of spectral lightning pa.s.sed through his eyes, through his brain, with every throb of the burning arteries; then utter darkness came,--a darkness that surged and moaned, as the circ.u.mfluence of a shadowed sea. And through and over the moaning pealed one mult.i.tudinous human cry, one hideous interblending of shoutings and shriekings ... A woman's hand was locked in his own ... "Tighter," he muttered, "tighter still, darling! hold as long as you can!" It was the tenth night of August, eighteen hundred and fifty-six ...

--"Cheri!"

Again the mysterious whisper startled him to consciousness,--the dim knowledge of a room filled with ruby colored light,--and the sharp odor of vinegar. The house swung round slowly;--the crimson flame of the lamp lengthened and broadened by turns;--then everything turned dizzily fast,--whirled as if spinning in a vortex ... Nausea unutterable; and a frightful anguish as of teeth devouring him within,--tearing more and more furiously at his breast. Then one atrocious wrenching, rending, burning,--and the gush of blood burst from lips and nostrils in a smothering deluge. Again the vision of lightnings, the swaying, and the darkness of long ago. "Quick!--quick!--hold fast to the table, Adele!--never let go!" ...

... Up,--up,--up!--what! higher yet? Up to the red sky! Red--black-red ... heated iron when its vermilion dies. So, too, the frightful flood!

And noiseless. Noiseless because heavy, clammy,--thick, warm, sickening--blood? Well might the land quake for the weight of such a tide!--Why did Adele speak Spanish? Who prayed for him? ...

--"Alma de Cristo santisima santificame!

"Sangre de Cristo, embriagame!

"O buen Jesus, oye me!" ...

Out of the darkness into--such a light! An azure haze! Ah!--the delicious frost! ... All the streets were filled with the sweet blue mist ... Voiceless the City and white;--crooked and weed grown its narrow ways! ... Old streets of tombs, these ... Eh! How odd a custom!--a Night-bell at every door. Yes, of course!--a night-bell!--the Dead are Physicians of Souls: they may be summoned only by night,--called up from the darkness and silence ... Yet she?--might he not dare to ring for her even by day? ........ Strange he had deemed it day!--why, it was black, starless ... And it was growing queerly cold ...... How should he ever find her now? It was so black ... so cold! ...

--"Cheri!"

All the dwelling quivered with the mighty whisper.

Outside, the great oaks were trembling to their roots;--all the sh.o.r.e shook and blanched before the calling of the sea.

And Carmen, kneeling at the feet of the dead, cried out, alone in the night:--

--"O Jesus misericordioso!--tened compasion de el!"