CHAPTER XIX.
Therese Caseneuve, Philip Rondelet, and the faithful Hero were made welcome at Thebes. The greeting that awaited them was a solemn one. People looked them in the face searchingly; and reading there the look that they sought, took them by the hand and bade them welcome to the city of death. The band of workers, the doctors, the nurses, and the men of God already come together from all parts of the Union,—North, South, East, and West,—recognized in the new-comers three strong helpers fit to undertake the labor of which only the noblest men and women are capable. The outgoing trains, that stopped a mile from the city, daily bore away people fleeing from the pestilence, deserting friend and loved one in a mad panic of fear which overcame every better feeling; but the incoming trains brought men and women, even youths and girls, who came to labor amidst strangers,—a labor whose only earthly reward might be death in its most terrible form, a hasty and unsanctified burial, and a namaless grave in the potter's field. For the pestilence that walketh by night had smitten the fair town of Thebes as pray God city may never again be visited in this land of ours!
What sin was there in the town that it should be thus chastened with a punishment more awful than that which befell Sodom and Gomorrah? They were wiped out all in one hour, and after a brief agony their sinners slept at peace; in Thebes each hour saw a new agony, each day a fresh list of victims.
What law had its citizens broken that they were so afflicted? Alas! the law which commands that cleanliness should be held as only second to godliness,—that commandment which, if it be set at nought, brings so terrible a punishment to the offenders.
Philip, wishing to keep Therese as much under his care as possible, suggested that some one of the many houses which the richer folk had deserted should be turned into a hospital where the homeless sick, those creatures who were daily stricken down in the streets and public places, might be brought and tended. No sooner had he made this plan known than he was informed that one of the largest houses in the town was at his disposal. Its owner herself sought him out, and begged that without delay he would take possession of her dwelling. She was a striking-looking woman, about forty years of age, showing traces of a remarkable beauty. Her soft brown eyes and gentle, magnetic voice attracted him strongly, as with simple generosity she gave him possession of her house and all that it contained, only reserving to herself the right to share in nursing the patients. That very day saw her richly furnished dwelling transformed into a pest-house, where the nameless sufferers of the streets were tended with the greatest care and devotion. Madame Anna—for so this woman was called—never spared herself, and day and night was found at her post, faithful and self-contained. The dreadful sights, the heart-rending scenes, before which Therese often grew sick and faint, and which it took all Philip's strength to endure, Madame Anna bore with a composure and fortitude which gave her fellow-workers fresh courage. Madame Anna, a woman of the town, whose sumptuous house had seen such unholy orgies, now passed from room to room, ministering to the wretched sufferers, the off-scouring of the streets, the very lowest of whom in other days had claimed the right to scoff at her. To this strangely assorted band of workers came one more, Virginia Allen, a girl from a New England town, as fair and good and young as Margaret herself. She had come to join the noble army of martyrs; and Philip; finding that she was wretchedly housed, prayed Madame Anna's hospitality for her—for Margaret's sake, to whom he fancied she bore a far-away resemblance.
Money and clothing, stores and medicine, were sent them daily from Northern cities, in which the pitiful cry for help was generously answered; and the people flocked to the house of the Magdalen to receive the goods and rations daily dealt out to them.
Famine was upon the city, though the fields were white with cotton, and the city full of laborers, able-bodied, but incapacitated by terror for work; and the burden of these hungry idlers seemed sometimes too heavy to be endured.
Summer was over all the land; the trees had leafed, and the flowers bloomed with a beauty and fulness which, by contrast to the squalor and horror of the city, seemed unprecedented. The weather was halcyon, the skies cloudless, the air—save where it blew over some tainted quarter—sweet and languorous. At mid-day the sun burned fiercely in the heavens; but at night the moonlight turned the city into a fairy-land. Snatching a brief hour of repose after a day of ceaseless toil, Philip sat upon the gallery looking out upon the garden, where all was quiet. The street was deserted; not a sound broke the magic stillness. The full moon blazed in mid-heaven with a radiance such as he had never before seen. Peace seemed spread abroad; the shrieks of delirium, the labored breath and strangling groan of the death agony were stilled. For a moment all the terrible reality by which he was surrounded was forgotten, and Philip sat dreaming of the cool sea-girt city from which he had that day received tidings of Margaret. She had sent a contribution of money and of clothing. He had recognized among the many useful articles of dress a pair of tiny satin shoes, half-worn, and holding still the impress of her foot. They were modish little shoes, high-instepped and silver-buckled, inappropriate enough for the class of women for whom they were sent; but they seemed to Philip Rondelet like a talisman, and he had kissed them and put them in his breast, as if they had been sent him for a love-token. Some one touched him on the shoulder, calling him back from that blessed moment of oblivion to the fearful intensity of the present; it was Virginia. He started to his feet, feeling as guilty as a drowsing picket challenged on his post.
"What is it, my child?"
"The priest I watched with last night died this morning; there is not one other clergyman who is not down with the fever. They have come to take him. Can we not go to see him buried? It seems too terrible, after all that he has done, that there should be no word said over him, no friend to follow him to his grave."
Philip hesitated. His charge was with the living, his time and strength were too precious to waste with the dead; but the girl went on and would not be denied.
"Come, let us go, the drive will do us both good; I have not been in the air for nearly a week. You must come with me, or I will call Therese and we will go alone."
"Therese is asleep, and Madame Anna begged that we should not wake her; she has not been in bed for many nights. I will go with you, Virginia, but we must hasten; I have still to make my rounds to-night."
All barriers of caste were swept away in this terrible time. Anna the Magdalen, Virginia the pure, delicate Northern maiden, Therese the hunted fugitive flying from the law, Rondelet the fastidious aristocrat and man of the world, addressed each other by their Christian names, as if they had been brother and sisters to one another in blood, as they were in their self-abnegation and faith.
A rude cart stood waiting; they took their seats as best they might beside the rough pine coffin, and with Hero and one other negro for guides, made their way to the city of the dead, to which came each day more and more denizens. The wide gates stood hospitably open,—there was little need to close them now; and under the shadow of the white cross reared high over the entrance the funeral cortège moved rapidly to its destination. No time in these days for solemn march or death-dirge, the sick claimed all the time of those that were whole; none might linger with the dead.
They reached the grave, and Virginia slipped into Philip's hand the prayer-book open at the burial-service. By the light of the moon, with the two bearers and Virginia kneeling beside him, Philip read aloud the sentences of that great service of the Church of England,—the most glorious and immortal jewel that our language enshrines. When he had said the last words, a sweet, trembling voice which grew stronger at every measure was lifted up, and Virginia sang a hymn of hope and of triumph. The men had already begun the task of filling the grave, but high above the dull sound of the clotted earth striking upon the coffin-lid rose the joyous chant which the virgin martyr sang over the priest whose footsteps she was soon to follow to the land beyond the grave.
In the weeks which followed, Philip Rondelet saw men and women tried, as it is not often given to man to be tried, in a fiery furnace of suffering and pain. All that is best, all that is worst, in humanity was brought out under the crucial test. People who might in other times have lived and died unconscious of the heroism latent in their souls figured as martyrs in the doomed community, while others who had stood high in public esteem, as in their own eyes, were branded with the shameful epithets of coward and traitor. Husbands deserted wives, and fathers children; but the records failed to show one case of a woman who betrayed the trust of husband, parent, or child. And this testimony, given by a man who passed through the terrible epidemic at Thebes, it is gratifying for a woman here to set down. In this life-and-death struggle, as in that other time of battle, the blacks were faithful to their trust; and though most of the great houses and much valuable property were left entirely in their hands, there is not one instance where the master, flying from the pestilence and leaving his goods in the hands of his servant, found just cause for complaint on his return.
The days went by, and the summer drew to its close. In a few weeks the coming of the cold weather would check the plague; but in these weeks the fever raged at its very worst, as if eager to grasp more and always more victims before the spirit of the frost should exorcise it and the broken people be at peace. The ranks of workers grew thinner and thinner, and those that were spared strained their utmost strength to do the work that was laid upon them. The days of weeping were long past. The strong grew cheerful, each one in his endeavor to keep up the courage of his fellows. The weak became reckless, and it was not an unusual thing, in that reign of terror, to hear harsh laughter and grim bravado and jest as one passed through the desolate streets. This phase was perhaps the most terrible one that Philip encountered. He found one day a drunken, blaspheming husband beside a dying wife, and in the next room a mother singing to a writhing child, soothing and petting the little one she still hoped to save, while they were bearing away from her the other darling she had watched and prayed over in vain.
It was at this time, in the fiercest stress and terror, that Virginia Allen passed on to the reward that awaited her. The two women and the man beside whom she had worked so faithfully nursed her with a care which would have saved her, had it not been written that she should die in the midst of her toil. She died, this fair Northern girl, having given her life to succor the sick and dying of a stranger city. O South! can there be any bitterness left in your hearts against a North which has laid so white a sacrifice before the awful demon of the pestilence that laid your fairest cities desolate? One such pure life—and there were many such given—should efface the memory of a Gettysburg and a Shiloh.
A great grief fell upon those that were left when the youngest and frailest of them was taken. Now that they had lost her, it seemed to them that Virginia had been the strongest of the four; and Madame Anna, who till then had never lost her quiet cheerfulness, never smiled again. Each one asked himself or herself: "Which one of us next?" Philip had succeeded so wonderfully with his patients, turning out more convalescents than any other doctor, that they had all felt perfect faith in him and in his ability to save them and himself. From the outside world, which stood aghast at the tales of suffering and death which every day's bulletin told, came help, and, what was better, sympathy. It is not probable that those who penned the words of praise and of sympathy that found their way through mail and press and telegraph to the devoted city ever realized what cordial to the fainting souls these loving messages proved. Robert and Margaret, Sara Harden and many another loyal friend, in this way helped to keep up Philip's courage and strength, on which the great draughts drawn daily were beginning to tell. His fine nervous constitution was tasked to its fullest capacity; and now the reserve force—that last fund of human endurance—was coming into play. He had grown thinner and paler, and his eyes looked larger and more unfathomably deep than ever. Those blue-gray eyes, which had burned with so tender a light of love for Margaret Ruysdale, now seemed gifted with a power of seeing beyond the vision of other men, and tender with a love surpassing that of a lover for his mistress.
Therese had grown stronger and better, in spite of the hard labor which was so new to her. The cankering bitterness which had eaten her heart was all gone now; in the awful reality in which she lived, things before and behind her shone out in their true colors. She saw and repented her own sin, and was glad of the expiation in which she believed she was atoning for her past. Her greatest anxiety was centred in Philip, whom she watched and guarded with a jealous care, sparing his strength and foreseeing his every wish, in her desire to save him all unnecessary fatigue. She had grown wonderfully gentle and tender, the poor half-crazed Therese, and Hero himself was not more humble and faithful in ministering to his master than was she. She had never greatly feared the fever for herself; it was for Philip that she grew more and more anxious as the weeks went by, each one taking with it a little and a little more of his strength. At last she spoke to him, and begged him to begone while there was yet time.
They were watching beside Madame Anna, who had at last been overtaken by the fever, and whose vigorous physique was struggling with the destroyer, when Therese suddenly laid her hand on Philip's arm and entreated him to leave Thebes.
"And leave you, Therese? No, my child, we are now seeing the beginning of the end; for the last three days the new cases have been diminishing, and the character of the disease has become less malignant. More recover than die now."
"Yes, and for that reason you must go. You have done your work; the worst is past. I will stay with Madame Anna till she is well, or till all is over. There is no danger for me; it rarely attacks my people."
Since she had learned that her blood was tainted by that inferior strain, which until it is removed to the thirty-second degree, according to the old code noir, outbalances the purer blood and makes the individual a person of color, Therese had always spoken of herself as belonging to the African race. And yet Therese Caseneuve, half sister of Robert Feuardent, bore no vestige of African descent, unless it was in the deep notes of her voice, pathetic and passionate in turn, or in her almost savage health and its attendant perfection of form. That one burning drop of negro blood had blighted her life; the knowledge of it had transformed the man who was her plighted husband into her destroyer. It had brought shame and sin and death to him; it had changed her from a happy, hopeful girl into a desperate and sinful woman, conscience-stricken and wellnigh a fratricide.
Madame Anna grew worse. It was evident that the fever had overcome her stout resistance. She herself saw that hope was past; and desiring to set her affairs in order, she summoned to her bedside her man of business, a mulatto who had been faithful to her even as were her new-made friends.
When she had talked long and earnestly with him she slept for a space, and then begged that she might be left alone with Therese. The interview was a long one, and lasted far into the night. Philip never knew what was said between the two erring women,—the one standing at the end of a career the saddest that falls to human lot, tarnished by a thousand sins, weighed down with the sense of the infinite woe and disgrace her life had brought upon other lives; the other trembling, affrighted, perhaps on the verge of such an existence, with the knowledge of evil in her eyes and the shrinking from sin haply not yet overcome in her heart. What future was there for this poor Therese, full of good and evil impulses, born of a race of slaves, bred with the tastes and ambitions of a refined gentlewoman, in whose veins surged the evil passions to which she owed her birth, in whose soul burned an inextinguishable hunger for a higher life?
When at last Philip came into Madame Anna's chamber, he found the Magdalen lying peacefully at rest, with Therese sleeping in the chair beside her from sheer exhaustion. The girl's eyes were swollen with weeping, and her slumber was broken by frequent sighs. The patient's face wore a calm look; and when he touched her hand, Philip knew that her sleep would know no waking.
In the days that followed, Philip learned that Madame Anna's house and land and all her other property had been willed to Therese for her sole use and pleasure. He never learned of the condition on which this rich legacy was given, nor of the solemn vow to observe it that Therese had made, with no other witness than the dying woman. The money that had been so miserably earned was to be expended, not in requiem masses for the dead, but in a manner far more likely to absolve the soul of the Magdalen from its punishment,—if it be true, as Therese believed, that the heartfelt prayers of the living can speed the dead on their journey toward eternal peace.