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So ran the time. There were no more new cases in our house; Mrs. Smith and I had had the scourge years before, as also had Senda, who remained over the way. Fontenette passed from one typical phase of the disorder to another “charmingly” as the doctor said, yet he specially needed just such exceptionally delicate care as his wife was giving him. In the city at large the deaths per day were more and more, and one night when it showered and there was a heavenly cooling of the air, the increase in the mortality was horrible. But the weather, as a rule, was steady and tropically splendid; the sun blazed; the moonlight was marvellous; the dews were like rains; the gardens were gay with butterflies. Our convalescent little ones hourly forgot how gravely far they were from being well, and it became one of our heavy cares to keep the entomologist from entomologizing–and from overeating.

From time to time, when shorthanded we had used skilled nurses; but when Mrs. Fontenette grew haggard and we mentioned them, she said distressfully: “O! no hireling hands! I can’t bear the thought of it!” and indeed the thought of the average hired “fever-nurse” of those days was not inspiring; so I served as her alternate when she would accept any and throw herself on the couch Senda had spread in the little parlor.

XVII

At length one day I was called up at dawn and went over to take her place once more, and when after several hours had passed I was still with him, Fontenette said, while I bent down,

“I have the fear thad’s going to go hahd with my wife, being of the Nawth.”

“Why, what’s going to go hard, old fellow?”

“The feveh. My dear frien’, don’t I know tha’z the only thing would keep heh f’om me thad long?”

“Still, you don’t know her case will be a hard one; it may be very light. But don’t talk now.”

“Well–I hope so. Me, I wou’n’ take ten thousand dollahs faw thad feveh myself–to see that devotion of my wife. You muz ‘ave observe’, eh?”

“Yes, indeed, old man; nobody could help observing. I wouldn’t talk any more just now.”

“No,” he insisted, “nobody could eveh doubt. ‘Action speak loudeh than word,’ eh?”

“Yes, but we don’t want either from you just now.” I put his restless arms back under the cover; not to keep the outer temperature absolutely even was counted a deadly risk. “Besides,” I said, “you’re talking out of character, old boy.”

He looked at me mildly, steadily, for several moments, as if something about me gave him infinite comfort. It was a man’s declaration of love to a man, and as he read the same in my eyes, he closed his own and drowsed.

Though he dozed only at wide intervals and briefly, he asked no more questions until night; then–“Who’s with my wife?”

“Mine.”

He closed his eyes again, peacefully. It was in keeping with his perfect courtesy not to ask how the new patient was. If she was doing well,–well; and if not, he would spare us the pain of informing or deceiving him.

Senda became a kind of chief-of-staff for both sides of the street. She would have begged to be Mrs. Fontenette’s nurse, but for one other responsibility, which we felt it would be unsafe, and she thought it would be unfair, for her to put thus beyond her own reach: “se care of mine hussbandt.”

She wore a plain path across the unpaved street to our house, and another to our neighbor’s. “Sat iss a too great risk,” she compassionately maintained, “to leaf even in se daytime sose shiltren–so late sick–alone viss only mine hussbandt and se sairvants!”

The doctor was concerned for Mrs. Fontenette from the beginning. “Terribly nervous,” he said, “and full from her feet to her eyes, of a terror of death–merely a part of the disease, you know.” But in this case I did not know.