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“Please, sir,” said a new maid–in place of one who had gone home fever struck and had died–“yo’ lady saunt me fo’ to tell you yo’ little boy a sett’n on de back steps an’ sayin’ his head does ache him, an’ she wish you’d ‘ten’ to him, ‘caze she cayn’t leave his lill’ sisteh, ‘caze she threaten with convulsion’.”

XV

Mrs. Fontenette and the maid silently ran in ahead of me; I went first to the mother. When I found Mrs. Fontenette again she had the child undressed and in his crib, and I remembered how often I had, in my heart, called her a coward.

She saw me pencil on a slip of paper at the mantelpiece, and went and read -“You mustn’t stay. He has the fever. You’ve never had it.”

She wrote beneath–“I should have got it weeks ago if God paid wages every day. Don’t turn me off.”

I dropped the paper into the small firegrate, added the other from my breastpocket, and set them ablaze, and the new maid, entering, praised burning paper as one of the best deodorizers known.

So my dainty rose-neighbor stayed; stayed all night, and all the next day and night, and on and on with only flying visits to her home over the way, until we were amazed at her endurance. The little fellow was never at ease with her out of his wild eyes. Her touch was balm to him, and her words peace. Oh, that they might have been healing also! But that was beyond the reach of all our striving. His days were as the flowers and winged things of the garden-kingdom, wherein he had been–without ever guessing it– their citizen-king.

It awakens all the tenderness at once that I ever had for Mrs. Fontenette, to recall what she was to him in those hours, and to us when his agonies were all past, and he lay so stately on his short bier, and she could not be done going to it and looking–looking–with streaming eyes.

As she stood close by the tomb, while we dumbly watched the masons seal it, I began to believe that she blamed herself for the child’s sickness and death, and presently I knew it must be so. One of those quaint burial societies of Negro women, in another quarter of the grounds, but within plain hearing, chose for the ending of their burial service–with what fitness to their burial service I cannot say, maybe none–a hymn borrowed, I judge, from the rustic whites, as usual, but Africanized enough to thrill the dullest nerves; and the moment it began my belief was confirmed.

My sin is so dahk, Lawd, so dahk and so deep,
My grief is so po’, Lawd, so po’ and so mean,
I wisht I could weep, Lawd, I wisht I could weep,
Oh, I wisht I could weep like Mary Mahgaleen!

Oh, Sorroh! sweet Sorroh! come, welcome, and stay!
I’d welcome thy swode howsomever so keen,
If I could jes’ pray, Lawd, if I could jes’ pray,
Oh! if I could jes’ pray, like Mary Mahgaleen!

My belief was confirmed, I say; but I was glad to see also that no one else read as I read the signs by which I was guided. At the cemetery gate I heard some one call–“Yo’ madam is sick, sih,” and, turning, saw Mrs. Fontenette, deathly white, lift her blue eyes to her husband and he get his arm about her just in time to save her from falling. She swooned but a moment, and, in the carriage, before it started off, tried to be quite herself, though very pale.

“It’s nothing but the reaction,” said to me the lady who fanned her, and we agreed it was a wonder she had held up so long.

“Hyeh, honey,” put in the child’s old black nurse, in a voice that never failed to soothe, however grotesque its misinterpretations, “lay yo’ head on me; an’ lay it heavy: dass what I’m use-en to. Blessed is de pyo in haht; she shall res’ in de fea’ o’ de Lawd, an’ he shall lafe at heh calamity.”