5 The whisper roused him with a fearful start... Adèle's whisper ! So she was wont to rouse him sometimes in the old sweet nights,- to crave some little attention for ailing Eulalie,- to make some little confidence she had forgotten to utter during the happy evening. . . . No, no! It was only the trees. The sky was clouding over. The wind was rising. . . . How his heart beat! how his temples 10 pulsed! Why, this was fever! Such pains in the back and head! Still his skin was dry,- dry as parchment, burning. He rose up; and a bursting weight of pain at the base of the 15 skull made him reel like a drunken man. He staggered to the little mirror nailed upon the wall, and looked. How his eyes glowed; and there was blood in his mouth! He felt his pulse-spasmodic, o terribly rapid. Could it possibly —? No: this must be some pernicious malarial fever! The Creole does not easily fall a prey to the great tropical malady,-unless after a long absence in other climates. 25 True! he had been four years in the army! But this was 1867. . . . He hesitated a moment; then,- opening his medicinechest, he measured out and swallowed thirty grains of quinine. 30 Then he lay down again. His head pained him more and more; - it seemed as if the cervical vertebrae were filled with fluid iron. And still his skin remained dry as if tanned. Then the an- 35 guish grew so intense as to force a groan with almost every aspiration. . . . Nausea, and the stinging bitterness of quinine rising in his throat; - dizziness, and a brutal wrenching within his stomach. 40 Everything began to look pink; - the light was rose-colored. It darkened more, kindled with deepening tint. Something kept sparkling and spinning before his sight, like a firework. . . . Then a 45 burst of blood mixed with chemical bitterness filled his mouth; the light became scarlet as claret. This - this . . ..not malaria. VI was Then the delirium seized him; he moaned, sobbed, cried like a child,- talked wildly at intervals in French, in English, in Spanish. 'Mentira! - you could not be her mother. . . . Still, if you were And she must not come in here,― jamais! . . . Carmen, did you know Adèle,- Adèle Florane? So like her, so like,- God only knows how like! . . . Perhaps I think I know; but I do not do not know justly, fully-how like! . . . Si! sí! es el vómito! yo lo conozso, Carmen! . . . She must not die twice. . . . I died twice. . . . I am going to die again. She only once. Till the heavens be no more she will not rise. . . . Moi, au contraire, il faut que je me lève toujours! They need me so much; -the slate is always full; the bell will never stop. They will ring that bell for me when I am dead. . . . So will I rise again! — resurgam! . . . How could I save him?- could not save myself. It was a bad case,- at seventy years. . . . There! Qui çà?' He saw Laroussel again,-reaching out a hand to him through a whirl of red smoke. He tried to grasp it, and could not. 'N'importe, mon ami,' said Laroussel, tu vas la voir bientôt.' Who was he to see soon? qui donc, Laroussel?' But Laroussel did not answer. Through the red mist he seemed to smile; then passed. For some hours Carmen had trusted she could save her patient,- desperate as the 50 case appeared to be. His was one of those rapid and violent attacks, such as often despatch their victims in a single day. In the Cuban hospitals she had seen many and many terrible examples: strong young men,- soldiers fresh from Spain, -carried panting to the fever wards at sunrise; carried to the cemeteries at sunset. Even troopers riddled with revolu Carmen knew what it was; but the brave little woman was not afraid of it. Many a time before she had met it face to face, in Havanese summers; she knew 55 how to wrestle with it; she had torn Feliu's life away from its yellow clutch, after one of those long struggles that tionary bullets had lingered longer. . . . Still, she had believed she might save Julien's life: the burning forehead once began to bead, the burning hands grew moist. never let gush of blood burst from lips and nostrils in a smothered deluge. Again the vision of lightnings, the swaying, and the darkness of long ago. Quick! - quick! — 5 hold fast to the table, Adèle ! go. Up,— up,— up! - what! higher yet? Up to the red sky! Red-blackred... heated iron when its vermillion So, too, the frightful flood! And noiseless. Noiseless because heavy, clammy, thick, warm, sickening.. blood? Well might the land quake for the weight of such a tide!... Why did Adèle speak Spanish? Who prayed for him? But now the wind was moaning; — the air had become lighter, thinner, cooler. A storm was gathering in the east; and to the fever-stricken man the change meant death. . . . Impossible to bring the 10 dies. priest of the Caminada now; and there was no other within a day's sail. She could only pray; she had lost all hope in her own power to save. Still the sick man raved; but he talked 15 to himself at longer intervals, and with longer pauses between his words; - his voice was growing more feeble, his speech more incoherent. His thought vacillated and distorted, like a flame in a wind. 20 Weirdly the past became confounded with the present; impressions of sight and of sound interlinked in fantastic affinity, the face of Chita Viosca, the murmur of the rising storm. Then flickers of 25 spectral lightning passed through his eyes, through his brain, with every throb of the burning arteries; then utter darkness came,- a darkness that surged and moaned, as the circumference of a shadowed sea. And through and over the moaning pealed one multitudinous human cry, one hideous interblending of shoutings and shriekings. . . . A woman's hand was locked in his own. . . . 35 'Tighter,' he muttered, tighter still, darling! hold as long as you can.' It was the tenth of August, eighteen hundred and fifty-six. "Chéri!' 30 40 Again the mysterious whisper startled him to consciousness.- the dim knowledge of a room filled with ruby-colored light,and the sharp odor of vinegar. The house swung round slowly; the crimson flame 45 of the lamp lengthened and broadened by turns; then everything turned dizzily fast, whirled as if spinning in a vortex. ... . Nausea unutterable; and a frightful anguish as of teeth devouring 50 m within,-tearing more and more furiously at his breast. Then one atrocious wrenching, rending, burning, and the 'Alma de Cristo santísima santficame! 'Sangre de Cristo, embriágame! O buen Jesus, oye me!' . Out of the darkness into such a light! An azure haze! Ah!-the delicious frost! . . . All the streets were filled with sweet blue mist. . . . Voiceless the City and white; crooked and weed-grown its narrow ways!... Old streets of tombs these. . . Eh! how odd a custom! a Night-bell at every door. Yes, of course! - a night-bell!- the Dead are the Physicians of Souls: they may be summoned only by night,- called up from the darkness and silence. . . . Yet she? might not he dare to ring for her even by day? . . . Strange he had deemed it day! - why, it was black, starless. . . . And it was growing queerly cold. How should he ever find her now? It was so black . . . so cold! ... 'Chéri!' JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY (1849-1916) James Whitcomb Riley had the unique distinction of having his native state, even while he was still living, declare his birthday a legal holiday by legislative enactment. Greenfield, Indiana, was his birthplace, and there and in the neighboring city of Indianapolis he spent the greater part of his life. His father, a lawyer, had intended that his son should complete his high school studies and then enter his office as a law student, but the boy had far more picturesque ambitions. He learned the trade of sign-painting, he traveled for a year as advertising agent for a patent medicine vendor, and then for three or four years was entertainer with a traveling troupe. Afterwards came desultory newspaper work, then in 1877 steady employment on the Indianapolis Journal, and finally, after 1885, a career on the lecture platform as a reader of his own poems. He began his poetical work as a humorist, and under various pseudonyms contributed verses to all the papers of the region; then in 1883 he issued at his own expense the little collection entitled The Old Swimmin'-Hole and 'Leven More Poems. It was not, however, until his volume Afterwhiles, 1887, appeared that he secured general recognition. From that time on he was voluminous, his final collection containing fourteen volumes. Riley may be taken as the leading American representative of that latter-day movement which may be called the democratization of poetry. He dealt with humble life, usually rural life and humble characters; he wrote often in dialect; and he used with liberal hand sentiment, and not over-refined humor, and all those other well-known devices that enable the public reader to win popular audiences. His poems are thoroughly American and thoroughly democratic, and his influence on the period has been considerable. Often he strikes the note of true pathos, especially in his lyrics of childhood, and now and then there are chords that raise him from the ranks of the mere entertainers into the select company of the true poets. 1 The poems used in this collection are from the Biographical edition of the Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley, copyright 1913. and are used by special permission of the publishers, the Bobbs-Merrill Company. |