34. CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE INTERVIEW.
WE left August on that summer day on the
levee at Louisville without employment. He
was not exactly disheartened, but he was homesick.
That he was forbidden to go back by
threats of prosecution for his burglarious manner
of entering Samuel Anderson's house was reason enough for
wanting to go; that his father's family were not yet free from
danger was a stronger reason; but strongest of all, though he
blushed to own it to himself, was the longing to be where he
might perchance sometimes see the face he had seen that spring
morning in the bottom of a sun-bonnet. Right manfully did he
fight against his discouragement and his homesickness, and his
longing to see Julia. It was better to stay where he was. It was
better not to go back beaten. If he surrendered so easily, he
would never put himself into a situation where he could claim
Julia with self-respect. He would stay and make his way in
the world somehow. But making his way in the world did not
seem half so easy now as it had on that other morning in March
when he stood in the barn talking to Julia. Making your fortune
always seems so easy until you've tried it. It seems rather
easy in a novel, and still easier in a biography. But no Samuel
Smiles ever writes the history of those who fail; the vessels that
never came back from their venturous voyages left us no
log-books. Many have written the History of Success. What
melancholy Plutarch shall arise to record, with a pen dipped in
wormwood, the History of Failure?
No! he would not go back defeated. August said this over
bravely, but a little too often, and with a less resolute tone at
each repetition. He contemned himself for his weakness, and
tried, but tried in vain, to form other plans. Had he known
how much one's physical state has to do with one's force of
character, he might have guessed that he did not deserve the
blame he meted out to himself. He might have remembered
what Shakespeare's Portia says to Brutus, that “humour hath
his hour with every man.” But with a dull and unaccountable
aching in his head and back he compromised with himself. He
would go to the castle and pass a day or two. Then he would
return and fight it out.
So he got on the packet Isaac Shelby, and was soon shaking
with a chill that showed how thoroughly malaria had pervaded
his system. His very bones seemed frozen. But if you ever
shook with such a chill, or rather if you were ever shaken by
such a chill, taking hold of you like a demoniacal possession;
if you ever felt your brain congealing, your icy bones breaking,
your frosty heart becoming paralyzed, with a cold no fire could
reach, you know what it is; and if you have not felt it, no
words of mine can make you understand the sensations. After
the chill came the period when August felt himself between two
parts of Milton's hell, between a sea of ice and a sea of fire;
sometimes the hot wave scorched him, then it retired again before
the icy one. At last it was all hot, and the boiling blood scalded
his palms and steamed to his brain, bewildering his thoughts
and almost blinding his eyes. He had determined when he
started to get off at a wood-yard three miles below Andrew's
castle, to avoid observation and the chance of arrest; and now
in his delirium the purpose as he had planned it remained fixed.
He got up at two o'clock, crazed with fever, dressed himself, and
went out into the rainy night. He went ashore in the mud
and bushes, and, guided more by instinct than by any conscious
thought, he started up the wagon-track along the river bank.
His furious fever drove him on, talking to himself, and splashing
recklessly into the pools of rain-water standing in the road.
He never remembered his debarkation. He must have fallen once
or twice, for he was covered with mud when he rang the alarm
at the castle. In answer to Andrew's “Who's there?” he
answered, “You'll have to send a harder rain than that if you
want to put this fire out!”
And so, what with the original disease, the mental discouragement,
and the exposure to the rain, the fever had well-nigh consumed
the life, and now that the waves of the hot sea after days
of fire and nights of delirium had gone back, there was hardly
any life left in the body, and the doctors said there was no
hope. One consuming desire remained. He wanted to see Julia
once before he went away; and that one desire it seemed impossible
to gratify. When he learned of the failure of Jonas to get
any message to Julia through Cynthy, he had felt the keenest
disappointment, and had evidently been sinking since the hope
that kept him up had been taken away.
The mother sat by his bed, Gottlieb sat stupefied at the foot,
with Jonas by his side, and Wilhelmina was crying in a still
fashin in one corner of the room. August lay breathing
feebly, and with his life evidently ebbing.
“August!” said Andrew, as he stood over his bed, having
come to announce the arrival of Julia. “August!” Andrew
tried to speak quietly, but there was a something of hope in the
inflection, a tremor of eagerness in the utterance, that made the
mother look up quickly and inquiringly
August opened his eyes slowly and looked into the face of the
Philosopher. Then he slowly closed his eyes again, and a something,
not a smile—he was too weak for that—but a look of
infinite content, spread over his wan face.
“I know,” he whisperd.
“Know what?” asked Andrew, leaning down to catch his
words.
“Julia.” And a single tear crept out from under the closed
lid. The tender mother wiped it away.
After resting a moment, August looked up at Andrew's face
inquiringly
“She is coming,” said the Philosopher.
August smiled very faintly, but Andrew was sure he smiled,
and again leaned down his ear.
“She is here,” whispered August; “I heard Charon bark, and
I—saw—your—face.”
Andrew now stepped to the closet-door and opened it, and
Julia came out.
“Blamed ef he a'n't a witch!” whispered Jonas. “Cunjures
a angel out of his cupboard!”
Julia did not see anybody or anything but the white and
wasted face upon the pillow. The eyes were now closed again,
and she quickly crossed the floor, and—not without a faint
maidenly blush—stooped and kissed the parched lips, from which
the life seemed already to have fled.
And August with difficulty disengaged his wasted hand from
the cover, and laid his nerveless fingers—alas! like a skeleton's
now—in the warm hand of Julia, and said—she leaned down to
listen, as he whispered feebly through his dry lips out of a full
heart—“Thank God!”
And the Philosopher, catching the words, said audibly,
“Amen!”
And the mother only wept.
