``Where is she?'' I asked, temporizing.Nick was not a subtle person, and I was ready to follow him at great length in the praise of Antoinette.``I hope she is not here.''
``We made her go to Les Iles,'' said he.
``And you risked your life and stayed here without her?'' I said.
``As for risking life, that kind of criticism doesn't come well from you.And as for Antoinette,'' he added with a smile, ``I expect to see something of her later on.''
``Well,'' I answered with a sigh of supreme content, ``you have been a fool all your life, and I hope that she will make you sensible.''
``You never could make me so,'' said Nick, ``and besides, I don't think you've been so damned sensible yourself.''
We were silent again for a space.
``Davy,'' he asked, ``do you remember what I said when you had that miniature here?''
``You said a great many things, I believe.''
``I told you to consider carefully the masterful features of that lady, and to thank God you hadn't married her.
I vow I never thought she'd turn up.Upon my oath I never thought I should be such a blind slave as I have been for the last fortnight.Faith, Monsieur de St.Gre is a strong man, but he was no more than a puppet in his own house when he came back here for a day.That lady could govern a province,--no, a kingdom.But I warrant you there would be no climbing of balconies in her dominions.
I have never been so generalled in my life.''
I had no answer for these comments.
``The deuce of it is the way she does it,'' he continued, plainly bent on relieving himself.``There's no noise, no fuss; but you must obey, you don't know why.And yet you may flay me if I don't love her.''
``Love her!'' I repeated.
``She saved your life,'' said Nick; ``I don't believe any other woman could have done it.She hadn't any thought of her own.She has been here, in this room, almost constantly night and day, and she never let you go.The little French doctor gave you up--not she.She held on.Cursed if I see why she did it.''
``Nor I,'' I answered.
``Well,'' he said apologetically, ``of course I would have done it, but you weren't anything to her.Yes, egad, you were something to be saved,--that was all that was necessary.She had you brought back here--we are in Monsieur de St.Gre's house, by the way--in a litter, an she took command as though she had nursed yellow fever cases all her life.No flurry.I said that you were in love with her once, Davy, when I saw you looking at the portrait.I take it back.Of course a man could be very fond of her,'' he said, ``but a king ought to have married her.As for that poor Vicomte she's tied up to, I reckon I know the reason why he didn't come to America.An ordinary man would have no chance at all.God bless her!'' he cried, with a sudden burst of feeling, ``I would die for her myself.She got me out of a barrel of trouble with his Excellency.She cared for my mother, a lonely outcast, and braved death herself to go to her when she was dying of the fever.God bless her!''
Lindy was standing in the doorway.
``Lan' sakes, Marse Nick, yo' gotter go,'' she said.
He rose and pressed my fingers.``I'll go,'' he said, and left me.Lindy seated herself in the chair.She held in her hand a bowl of beef broth.From this she fed me in silence, and when she left she commanded me to sleep informing me that she would be on the gallery within call.
But I did not sleep at once.Nick's words had brought back a fact which my returning consciousness had hitherto ignored.The birds sang in the court-yard, and when the breeze stirred it was ever laden with a new scent.Ihad been snatched from the jaws of death, my life was before me, but the happiness which had thrilled me was gone, and in my weakness the weight of the sadness which had come upon me was almost unbearable.If I had had the strength, I would have risen then and there from my bed, I would have fled from the city at the first opportunity.
As it was, I lay in a torture of thought, living over again every part of my life which she had touched.Iremembered the first long, yearning look I had given the miniature at Madame Bouvet's.I had not loved her then.
My feeling rather had been a mysterious sympathy with and admiration for this brilliant lady whose sphere was so far removed from mine.This was sufficiently strange.
Again, in the years of my struggle for livelihood which followed, I dreamed of her; I pictured her often in the midst of the darkness of the Revolution.Then I had the miniature again, which had travelled to her, as it were, and come back to me.Even then it was not love I felt but an unnamed sentiment for one whom I clothed with gifts and attributes I admired: constancy, an ability to suffer and to hide, decision, wit, refuge for the weak, scorn for the false.So I named them at random and cherished them, knowing that these things were not what other men longed for in women.Nay, there was another quality which I believed was there--which I knew was there --a supreme tenderness that was hidden like a treasure too sacred to be seen.
I did not seek to explain the mystery which had brought her across the sea into that little garden of Mrs.Temple's and into my heart.There she was now enthroned, deified;that she would always be there I accepted.That I would never say or do anything not in consonance with her standards I knew.That I would suffer much I was sure, but the lees of that suffering I should hoard because they came from her.
What might have been I tried to put away.There was the moment, I thought, when our souls had met in the little parlor in the Rue Bourbon.I should never know.This I knew--that we had labored together to bring happiness into other lives.
Then came another thought to appall me.Unmindful of her own safety, she had nursed me back to life through all the horrors of the fever.The doctor had despaired, and I knew that by the very force that was in her she had saved me.She was here now, in this house, and presently she would be coming back to my bedside.Painfully Iturned my face to the wall in a torment of humiliation--I had called her by her name.I would see her again, but I knew not whence the strength for that ordeal was to come.