Chita: a Memory of Last Island Part 6

But as they reached at last the first of the broad bright lakes, the heat lifted, the breeze leaped up, the loose sail flapped and filled; and, bending graciously as a skater, the old San Marco began to shoot in a straight line over the blue flood. Then, while the boy sat at the tiller, Sparicio lighted his tiny charcoal furnace below, and prepared a simple meal,--delicious yellow macaroni, flavored with goats' cheese; some fried fish, that smelled appetizingly; and rich black coffee, of Oriental fragrance and thickness. Julien ate a little, and lay down to sleep again. This time his rest was undisturbed by the mosquitoes; and when he woke, in the cooling evening, he felt almost refreshed. The San Marco was flying into Barataria Bay. Already the lantern in the lighthouse tower had begun to glow like a little moon; and right on the rim of the sea, a vast and vermilion sun seemed to rest his chin. Gray pelicans came flapping around the mast;--sea-birds sped hurtling by, their white bosoms rose-flushed by the western glow ... Again Sparicio's little furnace was at work,--more fish, more macaroni, more black coffee; also a square-shouldered bottle of gin made its appearance. Julien ate less sparingly at this second meal; and smoked a long time on deck with Sparicio, who suddenly became very good-humored, and chatted volubly in bad Spanish, and in much worse English. Then while the boy took a few hours' sleep, the Doctor helped delightedly in maneuvering the little vessel. He had been a good yachtsman in other years; and Sparicio declared he would make a good fisherman. By midnight the San Marco began to run with a long, swinging gait;--she had reached deep water. Julien slept soundly; the steady rocking of the sloop seemed to soothe his nerves.

--"After all," he thought to himself, as he rose from his little bunk next morning,--"something like this is just what I needed." ... The pleasant scent of hot coffee greeted him;--Carmelo was handing him the tin cup containing it, down through the hatchway. After drinking it he felt really hungry;--he ate more macaroni than he had ever eaten before. Then, while Sparicio slept, he aided Carmelo; and during the middle of the day he rested again. He had not had so much uninterrupted repose for many a week. He fancied he could feel himself getting strong. At supper-time it seemed to him he could not get enough to eat,--although there was plenty for everybody.

All day long there had been exactly the same wave-crease distorting the white shadow of the San Marco's sail upon the blue water;--all day long they had been skimming over the liquid level of a world so jewel-blue that the low green ribbon-strips of marsh land, the far-off fleeing lines of pine-yellow sand beach, seemed flaws or breaks in the perfected color of the universe;--all day long had the cloudless sky revealed through all its exquisite transparency that inexpressible tenderness which no painter and no poet can ever reimage,--that unutterable sweetness which no art of man may ever shadow forth, and which none may ever comprehend,--though we feel it to be in some strange way akin to the luminous and unspeakable charm that makes us wonder at the eyes of a woman when she loves.

Evening came; and the great dominant celestial tone deepened;--the circling horizon filled with ghostly tints,--spectral greens and grays, and pearl-lights and fish-colors ... Carmelo, as he crouched at the tiller, was singing, in a low, clear alto, some tristful little melody.

Over the sea, behind them, lay, black-stretching, a long low arm of island-sh.o.r.e;--before them flamed the splendor of sun-death; they were sailing into a mighty glory,--into a vast and awful light of gold.

Shading his vision with his fingers, Sparicio pointed to the long lean limb of land from which they were fleeing, and said to La Brierre:--

--"Look-a, Doct-a! Last-a Islan'!"

Julien knew it;--he only nodded his head in reply, and looked the other way,--into the glory of G.o.d. Then, wishing to divert the fisherman's attention to another theme, he asked what was Carmelo singing.

Sparicio at once shouted to the lad:--

--"Ha! ... ho! Carmelo!--Santu diavulu! ... Sing-a loud-a! Doct-a lik-a! Sing-a! sing!" .... "He sing-a nicee,"--added the boatman, with his peculiar dark smile. And then Carmelo sang, loud and clearly, the song he had been singing before,--one of those artless Mediterranean ballads, full of caressing vowel-sounds, and young pa.s.sion, and melancholy beauty:--

"M'ama ancor, belta fulgente, Come tu m'amasti allor;-- Ascoltar non dei gente, Solo interroga il tuo cor." ...

--"He sing-a nicee,--mucha bueno!" murmured the fisherman. And then, suddenly,--with a rich and splendid ba.s.so that seemed to thrill every fibre of the planking,--Sparicio joined in the song:--

"M'ama pur d'amore eterno, Ne deilitto sembri a te; T'a.s.sicuro che l'inferno Una favola sol e." ...

All the roughness of the man was gone! To Julien's startled fancy, the fishers had ceased to be;--lo! Carmelo was a princely page; Sparicio, a king! How perfectly their voices married together!--they sang with pa.s.sion, with power, with truth, with that wondrous natural art which is the birthright of the rudest Italian soul. And the stars throbbed out in the heaven; and the glory died in the west; and the night opened its heart; and the splendor of the eternities fell all about them.

Still they sang; and the San Marco sped on through the soft gloom, ever slightly swerved by the steady blowing of the southeast wind in her sail;--always wearing the same crimpling-frill of wave-spray about her prow,--always accompanied by the same smooth-backed swells,--always spinning out behind her the same long trail of interwoven foam. And Julien looked up. Ever the night thrilled more and more with silent twinklings;--more and more mult.i.tudinously lights pointed in the eternities;--the Evening Star quivered like a great drop of liquid white fire ready to fall;--Vega flamed as a pharos lighting the courses ethereal,--to guide the sailing of the suns, and the swarming of fleets of worlds. Then the vast sweetness of that violet night entered into his blood,--filled him with that awful joy, so near akin to sadness, which the sense of the Infinite brings,--when one feels the poetry of the Most Ancient and Most Excellent of Poets, and then is smitten at once with the contrast-thought of the sickliness and selfishness of Man,--of the blindness and brutality of cities, whereinto the divine blue light never purely comes, and the sanctification of the Silences never descends ... furious cities, walled away from heaven ... Oh! if one could only sail on thus always, always through such a night--through such a star-sprinkled violet light, and hear Sparicio and Carmelo sing, even though it were the same melody always, always the same song!

... "Scuza, Doct-a!--look-a out!" Julien bent down, as the big boom, loosened, swung over his head. The San Marco was rounding into sh.o.r.e,--heading for her home. Sparicio lifted a huge conch-sh.e.l.l from the deck, put it to his lips, filled his deep lungs, and flung out into the night--thrice--a profound, mellifluent, booming horn-tone. A minute pa.s.sed. Then, ghostly faint, as an echo from very far away, a triple blowing responded...

And a long purple ma.s.s loomed and swelled into sight, heightened, approached--land and trees black-shadowing, and lights that swung ...

The San Marco glided into a bayou,--under a high wharfing of timbers, where a bearded fisherman waited, and a woman. Sparicio flung up a rope.

The bearded man caught it by the lantern-light, and tethered the San Marco to her place. Then he asked, in a deep voice:

--"Has traido al Doctor?"

--"Si, si!" answered Sparicio... "Y el viejo?"

--"Aye! pobre!" responded Feliu,--"hace tres dias que esta muerto."

Henry Edwards was dead!

He had died very suddenly, without a cry or a word, while resting in his rocking-chair,--the very day after Sparicio had sailed. They had made him a grave in the marsh,--among the high weeds, not far from the ruined tomb of the Spanish fisherman. But Sparicio had fairly earned his hundred dollars.

V.

So there was nothing to do at Viosca's Point except to rest. Feliu and all his men were going to Barataria in the morning on business;--the Doctor could accompany them there, and take the Grand Island steamer Monday for New Orleans. With this intention Julien retired,--not sorry for being able to stretch himself at full length on the good bed prepared for him, in one of the unoccupied cabins. But he woke before day with a feeling of intense prostration, a violent headache, and such an aversion for the mere idea of food that Feliu's invitation to breakfast at five o'clock gave him an internal qualm. Perhaps a touch of malaria. In any case he felt it would be both dangerous and useless to return to town unwell; and Feliu, observing his condition, himself advised against the journey. Wednesday he would have another opportunity to leave; and in the meanwhile Carmen would take good care of him ... The boats departed, and Julien slept again.

The sun was high when he rose up and dressed himself, feeling no better. He would have liked to walk about the place, but felt nervously afraid of the sun. He did not remember having ever felt so broken down before. He pulled a rocking-chair to the window, tried to smoke a cigar. It commenced to make him feel still sicker, and he flung it away. It seemed to him the cabin was swaying, as the San Marco swayed when she first reached the deep water.

A light rustling sound approached,--a sound of quick feet treading the gra.s.s: then a shadow slanted over the threshold. In the glow of the open doorway stood a young girl,--gracile, tall,--with singularly splendid eyes,--brown eyes peeping at him from beneath a golden riot of loose hair.

--"M'sieu-le-Docteur, maman d'mande si vous n'avez besoin d'que'que chose?" ... She spoke the rude French of the fishing villages, where the language lives chiefly as a baragouin, mingled often with words and forms belonging to many other tongues. She wore a loose-falling dress of some light stuff, steel-gray in color;--boys' shoes were on her feet.

He did not reply;--and her large eyes grew larger for wonder at the strange fixed gaze of the physician, whose face had visibly bleached,--blanched to corpse-pallor. Silent seconds pa.s.sed; and still the eyes stared--flamed as if the life of the man had centralized and focussed within them.

His voice had risen to a cry in his throat, quivered and swelled one pa.s.sionate instant, and failed--as in a dream when one strives to call, and yet can only moan ... She! Her unforgotten eyes, her brows, her lips!--the oval of her face!--the dawn-light of her hair! ... Adele's own poise,--her own grace!--even the very turn of her neck, even the bird-tone of her speech! ... Had the grave sent forth a Shadow to haunt him?--could the perfidious Sea have yielded up its dead? For one terrible fraction of a minute, memories, doubts, fears, mad fancies, went pulsing through his brain with a rush like the rhythmic throbbing of an electric stream;--then the shock pa.s.sed, the Reason spoke:--"Fool!--count the long years since you first saw her thus!--count the years that have gone since you looked upon her last!

And Time has never halted, silly heart!--neither has Death stood still!"

... "Plait-il?"--the clear voice of the young girl asked. She thought he had made some response she could not distinctly hear.

Mastering himself an instant, as the heart faltered back to its duty, and the color remounted to his lips, he answered her in French:--

"Pardon me!--I did not hear ... you gave me such a start!" ... But even then another extraordinary fancy flashed through his thought;--and with the tutoiement of a parent to a child, with an irresistible outburst of such tenderness as almost frightened her, he cried: "Oh! merciful G.o.d!--how like her! ... Tell me, darling, your name; ... tell me who you are?" (Dis-moi qui tu es, mignonne;--dis-moi ton nom.)

... Who was it had asked her the same question, in another idiom ever so long ago? The man with the black eyes and nose like an eagle's beak,--the one who gave her the compa.s.s. Not this man--no!

She answered, with the timid gravity of surprise:--

--"Chita Viosca"

He still watched her face, and repeated the name slowly,--reiterated it in a tone of wonderment:--"Chita Viosca?--Chita Viosca!"

--"C'est a dire ..." she said, looking down at her feet,--"Concha--Conchita." His strange solemnity made her smile,--the smile of shyness that knows not what else to do. But it was the smile of dead Adele.

--"Thanks, my child," he exclaimed of a sudden,--in a quick, hoa.r.s.e, changed tone. (He felt that his emotion would break loose in some wild way, if he looked upon her longer.) "I would like to see your mother this evening; but I now feel too ill to go out. I am going to try to rest a little."

--"Nothing I can bring you?" she asked,--"some fresh milk?"

--"Nothing now, dear: if I need anything later, I will tell your mother when she comes."

--"Mamma does not understand French very well."

--"No importa, Conchita;--le hablare en Espanol."

--"Bien, entonces!" she responded, with the same exquisite smile.

"Adios, senor!" ...

But as she turned in going, his piercing eye discerned a little brown speck below the pretty lobe of her right ear,--just in the peachy curve between neck and cheek.... His own little Zouzoune had a birthmark like that!--he remembered the faint pink trace left by his fingers above and below it the day he had slapped her for overturning his ink bottle ...

"To laimin moin?--to batte moin!"

"Chita!--Chita!"

She did not hear ... After all, what a mistake he might have made!

Were not Nature's coincidences more wonderful than fiction? Better to wait,--to question the mother first, and thus make sure.

Still--there were so many coincidences! The face, the smile, the eyes, the voice, the whole charm;--then that mark,--and the fair hair.

Zouzoune had always resembled Adele so strangely! That golden hair was a Scandinavian bequest to the Florane family;--the tall daughter of a Norwegian sea captain had once become the wife of a Florane.

Viosca?--who ever knew a Viosca with such hair? Yet again, these Spanish emigrants sometimes married blonde German girls ... Might be a case of atavism, too. Who was this Viosca? If that was his wife,--the little brown Carmen,--whence Chita's sunny hair? ...