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“Yes, he cou’n’t tell anybody where to take him, and a doctor found that letteh on him print’ outside with yo’ uptown address; and so he put him in a cab an’ sen’ him yondeh, and sen’ word he muz ‘ave been sick sinze sev’l hours, an’ get him in bed quick don’t lose a minute.”

“And so he’s in bed at my house!” I put in approvingly.

“Ah, no! I coul’n’ do like that; but I do the bes’ I could; he is at my ‘ouse in bed. An’ my own doctor sen’ word what to do an’ he’ll come in the mawning. And (to our neighbor) yo’ madame do uz that kineness to remain with Madame Fontenette whiles I’m bringing his wife.”

At the cottage my companions remained outside. As I entered Senda caught one glance and exclaimed, “Ah, mine hussbandt is foundt and is anyhow alife!”

“Yes,” I replied, “but he’s ill. Mr. Fontenette met him and took him to his house. He’s there now with Mrs. Fontenette and Mrs. Blank. Get a change of dress and come, we’ll all go together.”

Senda stared. “A shange of dtress?” Then, with a most significant mingling of relief and new disturbance, she said, “Ah, I see!” and looking from me to Mrs. Smith and from Mrs. Smith to me, while she whipped her bonnet ribbons into a bow, she cried, with shaking voice and streaming eyes:

“Oh, sank Kott! sank Kott! it iss only se yellow feveh.”

XIV

No sick man could have been better cared for than was the entomologist at our neighbor’s over the way. “The fever,” as in the Creole city it used to be sufficiently distinguished, is not so deadly, nor so treacherous, nor nearly so repulsive, as some other maladies, but none requires closer attention. After successive days and nights of unremitting vigilance, should there occur a momentary closing of the nurse’s eyes, or a turning from the bedside for a quarter of a minute, the irresponsible patient may attempt to rise and may fall back dying or dead. So, the attendant must have an attendant. In the case of the entomologist, his wife became the bedside nurse and sentinel.

In the next room, now and then Mrs. Smith, and now and then our fat neighbor’s wife, waited on her, but by far the most of the time, Mrs. Fontenette was her assistant. When Senda, while the patient dozed, stole brief moments of sleep to keep what she could of her overtasked powers, her place, at the bedside, was always filled by Fontenette, who as often kept his promise to call her the instant her husband should rouse.

Thus we brought our precious entomologist through the disorder’s first crisis, which generally comes exactly on the seventy-second hour, and in due time through the second, which falls, if I remember aright, on the ninth day. What I do recall with certainty, was that it came on one of the days of the city’s heaviest mortality and that two of our children, and my next neighbor’s wife, came down with the scourge.

And O, the beautiful days and the beautiful nights! It seemed the illusion of a dream, that between such land and sky, there should be not one street in that embowered city unsmitten by sorrow and death. Out of yonder fair home on the right, they carried yesterday, the loved mother of five children–but the Baron is better. From this one on the left, will be borne to-morrow such a man as no city can lightly spare, till now a living fulfilment of the word “Be thou clean”–but the entomologist will be ever so much better.

To be glad of it, you needed only to hear Senda allude to him as “Mine hussbandt.” Why did she never mention him in any other way? The little woman was a riddle to me. I did not see how she could give such a man such a love, and yet I never could see but she was as frank as a public record. Stranger still was it how she could be the marital partner–the mate, to speak plainly–of such a one, without showing or feeling the slightest spiritual debasement. Finally, however, I caught some light. I had stepped over to ask after “Mine hussbandt,” everyone else of us being busy with our own sick. Senda was letting Fontenette take her place in the sick-room, which, of course, was shut close. I silently entered the room in front of it, and perceiving that Mrs. Fontenette had drawn her into the other front room, adjoining–a door stood half open between–and was tempting her with refreshments, I sat down to await their next move. So presently I began to hear what they said to each other in their gentle speculations.