Strong Hearts Part 14

I crossed into my garden and silently mounted the balcony stairs I have mentioned once before. His balcony door was ajar. His room was empty. He had occupied the bed. A happy thought struck me--to feel the spot where he had lain; it was still warm. Good! But his clothes were all gone except his shoes, and they, you remember, were no proof that he was indoors.

I stole down into the garden once more, and looked hurriedly in several directions, but saw no sign of him. I am not a ferocious man even when alone, but as I came near the fence of our fat neighbor--once fat, poor fellow, and destined to be so again in time--and still saw no one, I was made conscious of waving my fist and muttering through my gritting teeth, by hearing my name softly called. It was an unfamiliar female voice that spoke, from a window beyond the fence, and it flashed on my remembrance that two kinswomen of my neighbor were watching with his wife, whose case was giving new cause for anxiety. It was Mrs. Soandso, the voice explained, and could I possibly come in there a moment?--if only to the window!

"Is our friend the Baron over here?" I asked, as I came to it. He was not.

"Well, never mind," I said; "how is your patient?"

"Oh that's just what we wish we knew. In some ways she seems better, but she's more unquiet. She's had some slight nausea and it seems to increase.

Do you think that is important?"

"Yes," I said, "very. I hear some one cracking ice; you are keeping ice on her throat--no? Well, begin it at once, and persuade her to lie on her back as quietly as she can, and get her to sleep if possible! Doctor--no; he wouldn't come before morning, anyhow; but I'll send Mrs. Smith right over to you, if she possibly can come."

I turned hurriedly away and had taken only a few steps, when I lit upon the entomologist. "Well, I'll just--what _are_ you doing here? Where were you when I was in your room just now?" His shoes were on.

"Vhat you vanted mit me? I vas by dot librair' going. For vhat you moof dot putterfly-net fon t'e mandtelpiece? You make me _too_ much troubple to find dot vhen I vas in a hurry!" He shook it at me.

"Hurry!" In my anger and distress I laughed. "My friend"--laying a hand on him--"you'll hurry across the street with me."

He waved me off. "Yes; go on, you; I coom py undt py; I dtink t'ere iss vun maud come into dot gardten, vhat I haf not pefore seen since more as acht years, alreadty!"

"Yes," I retorted, "and so you're here at the gate alone. Now come right along with me! Aren't there enough lives in danger to-night, but you must"

-He stopped me in the middle of the street.

"Mine Gott! vhat iss dot you say? Who--_who_--mine Gott! _who_ iss her life in dtanger? Iss dot--mine Gott! is dot he-ere?" He pointed to Mrs.

Fontenette's front window.

I could hardly keep my fist off him. "Hush! you--For one place it's _here_." I pushed him with my finger.

"Ach!" he exclaimed in infinite relief. "I dt'ought you mean--I--I dt'ought--hmm!--hmm! I am dtired." He leaned on me like a sick child and we went into the cottage parlor. The moment he saw the lounge he lay down upon it, or I should have taken him back into the dining-room.

"Sha'n't I put that net away for you?" I murmured, as I dropped a light covering over him.

But he only hugged the toy closer. "No; I geep it--hmm!--hmm!--I am dtired--"

XX

Both patients, I found, were drowsing; the husband peacefully, the wife with troubled dreams. When the Baron spoke her eyes opened with a look, first eager and then distressful, but closed again. We put the old black woman temporarily into her room and Mrs. Smith hurried to our other neighbors, whence she was to despatch one of their servants to bid Senda come to us at once. But "No battle"--have I already used the proverb? She gave the message to the servant, but it never reached Senda. Somebody forgot. As I sat by Fontenette with ears alert for Senda's coming and was wondering at the unbroken silence, he opened his eyes on me and smiled.

"Ah!" he softly said, "thad was a pleasan' dream!"

"A pleasant dream, was it?"

"Yes; I was having the dream thad my wife she was showing me those rose- _bushes_; an' every rose-_bush_ it had roses, an' every rose it was perfect."

I leaned close and said that he had been mighty good not to ask about her all these many days, and that if he would engage to do as well for as long a time again, and to try now to have another good dream I would tell him that she was sleeping and was without any alarming symptoms. O lucky speech! It was true when it was uttered; but how soon the hour belied it!

As he obediently closed his eyes, his hand stole out from the side of the covers and felt for mine. I gave it and as he kept it his thought seemed to me to flow into my brain. I could feel him, as it were, thinking of his wife, loving her through all the deeps of his still nature with seven-- yes, seventy--times the pa.s.sion that I fancied would ever be possible to that young girl I had seen a few hours earlier showing her heart to the world, with falling hair and rending sobs. As he lay thus trying to court back his dream of perfect roses, I had my delight in knowing he would never dream-what Senda saw so plainly, yet with such faultless modesty-- that all true love draws its strength and fragrance from the riches not of the loved one's, but of the lover's soul.

His grasp had begun to loosen, when I thought I heard from the wife's room a sudden sound that made my mind flash back to the saucer I had failed to bring in. It was as though the old-fashioned, unweighted window-sash, having been slightly lifted, had slipped from the fingers and fallen shut.

I hearkened, and the next instant there came softly searching through doors, through walls, through my own flesh and blood, a long half-wailing sigh. Fontenette tightened on my hand, then dropped it, and opening his eyes sharply, asked, "What was that?"

"What was what, old fellow?" I pretended to have been more than half asleep myself.

"Did I only dream I 'eard it, thad noise?"

"That isn't a hard thing to do in your condition," I replied, with my serenest smile, and again he closed his eyes. Yet for two or three minutes it was plain he listened; but soon he forbore and began once more to slumber. Then very soon I faintly detected a stir in the parlor, and stealing to the door to listen through the dining-room, came abruptly upon the old black woman. Disaster was written on her face and when she spoke tears came into her eyes.

"De madam want you," she said, and pa.s.sed in to take my place.

As I went on to the parlor, Mrs. Smith, just inside Mrs. Fontenette's door, beckoned me. As I drew near I made an inquiring motion in the direction of our neighbor across the way.

"I'm hopeful," was her whispered reply; "but--in here"--she shook her head. Just then the new maid came from our house, and Mrs. Smith whispered again-- "Go over quickly to the Baron; he's in his room. 'Twas he came for me. He'll tell you all. But he'll not tell his wife, and she mustn't know."

As I ran across the street I divined almost in full what had taken place.

I had noticed the possibility of some of the facts when I had left the Baron asleep on the parlor lounge, but they could have done no harm, even when Senda did not come, had it not been for two other facts which I had failed to foresee; one, that we had unwittingly overtasked our willing old nurse, and in her chair in Mrs. Fontenette's room she was going to fall asleep; and the other that the entomologist would waken.

XXI

And now see what a cunning trap the most innocent intentions may sometimes set. There was a mirror in the sick-room purposely so placed that, with the parlor door ajar, the watcher, but not the patient, could see into the parlor, and could be seen from the parlor when sitting anywhere between the mirror and the window beyond it. This window was the one that looked into the side garden. Purposely, too, the lounge had been placed so as to give and receive these advantages. A candle stood on the window's inner ledge and was screened from the unseen bed, but shone outward through the window and inward upon the mirror. The front door of the parlor opened readily to anyone within or without who knew enough to use its two latches at once, but neither within nor without to--the Baron, say--who did not know.

Do you see it? As he lay awake on the lounge his eye was, of course, drawn constantly to the mirror by the reflected light of the candle, and to its images of the nodding watcher and of the window just beyond. So lying and gazing, he had suddenly beheld that which brought him from the lounge in an instant, net in hand, and tortured to find the front door--by which he would have slipped out and around to the window--fastened! What he saw was the moth--the moth so many years unseen. Now it sipped at the saucer of sweet stuff, now hovered over it, now was lost in the dark, and now fluttered up or slid down the pane, lured by the beam of the candle.

If he was not to lose it, there was but one thing to do. With his eyes fixed, moth-mad, on the window, he glided in, pa.s.sed the two sleepers, and stealthily lifted the sash with one hand, the other poising the net. The moth dropped under, the net swept after it, and the sash slipped and fell.

Mrs. Fontenette rose wildly, and when she saw first the old woman, half starting from her seat with frightened stare, and then the entomologist speechless, motionless, and looming like an apparition, she gave that cry her husband heard, and fell back upon the pillow in a convulsion.

I found the Baron sitting on the side of his bed like a child trying to be awake without waking. No, not _trying_ to do or be anything; but aimless, dazed, silent, lost.

He obeyed, automatically, my every request. I set about getting him to bed at once, putting his clothes beyond his reach, and even locking his balcony door, without a sign of objection from him. Then I left him for a moment, and calling Senda from the nursery to the parlor told her the state of the different patients, including her husband, but without the hows and whys except that I had found him in our garden with his precious net. "And now, as it will soon be day, Mrs. Smith and I--with the servants and others--can take care of the four."

"If I"--meekly interrupted the sweet woman--"vill go for se doctors? I vill go." Soon she was off.

Then I went back to her husband, and finding his mood so changed that he was eager to explain everything, I let him talk; which I soon saw was a blunder; for he got pitifully excited, and wanted to go over the same ground again and again. One matter I was resolved to fix in his mind without delay. "Mark you," I charged him, "your wife must never know a word of this!"

"Eh?--No"--and the next instant the sick woman across the way was filling all his thought: "Mine Gott! she rice oop scaredt in t'e bedt, choost so!"

and up he would start. Then as I pressed him down--"Mine Gott! I vould not go in, if I dhink she would do dot. Hmm! Hmm! I am sorry!--Undt I tidt not t'e mawdt get.

"Hmm! Even I t.i.tn't saw vhere it iss gone. Hmm! Hmm! I am sorry!

"Undt dot door kit shtuck! Hmm! Undt dot vindow iss not right made. Hmm!

"I tidn't vant to do dot--you know? Hmm! I am sorry!--Ach, mine Gott! she rice oop scaredt in t'e bedt, choost so!" Thus round and round. What to do for him I did not know!