_ CHAPTER III. HIS WIFE
In former times the presence in New Orleans, during the cooler half of the year, of large numbers of mercantile men from all parts of the world, who did not accept the fever-plagued city as their permanent residence, made much business for the renters of furnished apartments. At the same time there was a class of persons whose residence was permanent, and to whom this letting of rooms fell by an easy and natural gravitation; and the most respectable and comfortable rented rooms of which the city could boast were those _chambres garnies_ in Custom-house and Bienville streets, kept by worthy free or freed mulatto or quadroon women.
In 1856 the gala days of this half-caste people were quite over. Difference was made between virtue and vice, and the famous quadroon balls were shunned by those who aspired to respectability, whether their whiteness was nature or only toilet powder. Generations of domestic service under ladies of Gallic blood had brought many of them to a supreme pitch of excellence as housekeepers. In many cases money had been inherited; in other cases it had been saved up. That Latin feminine ability to hold an awkward position with impregnable serenity, and, like the yellow Mississippi, to give back no reflection from the overhanging sky, emphasized this superior fitness. That bright, womanly business ability that comes of the same blood added again to their excellence. Not to be home itself, nothing could be more like it than were the apartments let by Madame Cecile, or Madame Sophie, or Madame Athalie, or Madame Polyxene, or whatever the name might be.
It was in one of these houses, that presented its dull brick front directly upon the sidewalk of Custom-house street, with the unfailing little square sign of _Chambres a louer_ (Rooms to let), dangling by a string from the overhanging balcony and twirling in the breeze, that the sick wife lay. A waiting slave-girl opened the door as the two men approached it, and both of them went directly upstairs and into a large, airy room. On a high, finely carved, and heavily hung mahogany bed, to which the remaining furniture corresponded in ancient style and massiveness, was stretched the form of a pale, sweet-faced little woman.
The proprietress of the house was sitting beside the bed,--a quadroon of good, kind face, forty-five years old or so, tall and broad. She rose and responded to the Doctor's silent bow with that pretty dignity of greeting which goes with all French blood, and remained standing. The invalid stirred.
The physician came forward to the bedside. The patient could not have been much over nineteen years of age. Her face was very pleasing; a trifle slender in outline; the brows somewhat square, not wide; the mouth small. She would not have been called beautiful, even in health, by those who lay stress on correctness of outlines. But she had one thing that to some is better. Whether it was in the dark blue eyes that were lifted to the Doctor's with a look which changed rapidly from inquiry to confidence, or in the fine, scarcely perceptible strands of pale-brown hair that played about her temples, he did not make out; but, for one cause or another, her face was of that kind which almost any one has seen once or twice, and no one has seen often,--that seems to give out a soft, but veritable, light.
She was very weak. Her eyes quickly dropped away from his, and turned wearily, but peacefully, to those of her husband.
The Doctor spoke to her. His greeting and gentle inquiry were full of a soothing quality that was new to the young man. His long fingers moved twice or thrice softly across her brow, pushing back the thin, waving strands, and then he sat down in a chair, continuing his kind, direct questions. The answers were all bad.
He turned his glance to the quadroon; she understood it; the patient was seriously ill. The nurse responded with a quiet look of comprehension. At the same time the Doctor disguised from the young strangers this interchange of meanings by an audible question to the quadroon.
"Have I ever met you before?"
"No, seh."
"What is your name?"
"Zenobie."
"Madame Zenobie," softly whispered the invalid, turning her eyes, with a glimmer of feeble pleasantry, first to the quadroon and then to her husband.
The physician smiled at her an instant, and then gave a few concise directions to the quadroon. "Get me"--thus and so.
The woman went and came. She was a superior nurse, like so many of her race. So obvious, indeed, was this, that when she gently pressed the young husband an inch or two aside, and murmured that "de doctah" wanted him to "go h-out," he left the room, although he knew the physician had not so indicated.
By-and-by he returned, but only at her beckon, and remained at the bedside while Madame Zenobie led the Doctor into another room to write his prescription.
"Who are these people?" asked the physician, in an undertone, looking up at the quadroon, and pausing with the prescription half torn off.
She shrugged her large shoulders and smiled perplexedly.
"Mizzez--Reechin?" The tone was one of query rather than assertion. "Dey sesso," she added.
She might nurse the lady like a mother, but she was not going to be responsible for the genuineness of a stranger's name.
"Where are they from?"
"I dunno?--Some pless?--I nevva yeh dat nem biffo?"
She made a timid attempt at some word ending in "walk," and smiled, ready to accept possible ridicule.
"Milwaukee?" asked the Doctor.
She lifted her palm, smiled brightly, pushed him gently with the tip of one finger, and nodded. He had hit the nail on the head.
"What business is he in?"
The questioner arose.
She cast a sidelong glance at him with a slight enlargement of her eyes, and, compressing her lips, gave her head a little, decided shake. The young man was not employed.
"And has no money either, I suppose," said the physician, as they started again toward the sick-room.
She shrugged again and smiled; but it came to her mind that the Doctor might be considering his own interests, and she added, in a whisper:--
"Dey pay me."
She changed places with the husband, and the physician and he passed down the stairs together in silence.
"Well, Doctor?" said the young man, as he stood, prescription in hand, before the carriage-door.
"Well," responded the physician, "you should have called me sooner."
The look of agony that came into the stranger's face caused the Doctor instantly to repent his hard speech.
"You don't mean"--exclaimed the husband.
"No, no; I don't think it's too late. Get that prescription filled and give it to Mrs. ----"
"Richling," said the young man.
"Let her have perfect quiet," continued the Doctor. "I shall be back this evening."
And when he returned she had improved.
She was better again the next day, and the next; but on the fourth she was in a very critical state. She lay quite silent during the Doctor's visit, until he, thinking he read in her eyes a wish to say something to him alone, sent her husband and the quadroon out of the room on separate errands at the same moment. And immediately she exclaimed:--
"Doctor, save my life! You mustn't let me die! Save me, for my husband's sake! To lose all he's lost for me, and then to lose me too--save me, Doctor! save me!"
"I'm going to do it!" said he. "You shall get well!"
And what with his skill and her endurance it turned out so. _