Chita: A Memory of Last Island

boatman, withhis peculiar dark smile. And then Carmelo sang, loud and clearly, thesong he had been singing before,--one of those artless Mediterraneanballads, full of caressing vowel-sounds, and young passion, andmelancholy beauty:--

  "M'ama ancor, belta fulgente, Come tu m'amasti allor;-- Ascoltar non dei gente, Solo interroga il tuo cor." ...

  --"He sing-a nicee,--mucha bueno!" murmured the fisherman. And then,suddenly,--with a rich and splendid basso that seemed to thrill everyfibre of the planking,--Sparicio joined in the song:--

  "M'ama pur d'amore eterno, Ne deilitto sembri a te; T'assicuro che l'inferno Una favola sol e." ...

  All the roughness of the man was gone! To Julien's startled fancy, thefishers had ceased to be;--lo! Carmelo was a princely page; Sparicio, aking! How perfectly their voices married together!--they sang withpassion, with power, with truth, with that wondrous natural art whichis the birthright of the rudest Italian soul. And the stars throbbedout in the heaven; and the glory died in the west; and the night openedits heart; and the splendor of the eternities fell all about them.Still they sang; and the San Marco sped on through the soft gloom, everslightly swerved by the steady blowing of the southeast wind in hersail;--always wearing the same crimpling-frill of wave-spray about herprow,--always accompanied by the same smooth-backed swells,--alwaysspinning out behind her the same long trail of interwoven foam. AndJulien looked up. Ever the night thrilled more and more with silenttwinklings;--more and more multitudinously lights pointed in theeternities;--the Evening Star quivered like a great drop of liquidwhite fire ready to fall;--Vega flamed as a pharos lighting the coursesethereal,--to guide the sailing of the suns, and the swarming of fleetsof worlds. Then the vast sweetness of that violet night entered intohis blood,--filled him with that awful joy, so near akin to sadness,which the sense of the Infinite brings,--when one feels the poetry ofthe Most Ancient and Most Excellent of Poets, and then is smitten atonce with the contrast-thought of the sickliness and selfishness ofMan,--of the blindness and brutality of cities, whereinto the divineblue light never purely comes, and the sanctification of the Silencesnever descends ... furious cities, walled away from heaven ... Oh! ifone could only sail on thus always, always through such anight--through such a star-sprinkled violet light, and hear Sparicioand Carmelo sing, even though it were the same melody always, alwaysthe same song!

  ... "Scuza, Doct-a!--look-a out!" Julien bent down, as the big boom,loosened, swung over his head. The San Marco was rounding intoshore,--heading for her home. Sparicio lifted a huge conch-shell fromthe deck, put it to his lips, filled his deep lungs, and flung out intothe night--thrice--a profound, mellifluent, booming horn-tone. Aminute passed. Then, ghostly faint, as an echo from very far away, atriple blowing responded...

  And a long purple mass loomed and swelled into sight, heightened,approached--land and trees black-shadowing, and lights that swung ...The San Marco glided into a bayou,--under a high wharfing of timbers,where a bearded fisherman waited, and a woman. Sparicio flung up arope.

  The bearded man caught it by the lantern-light, and tethered the SanMarco to her place. Then he asked, in a deep voice:

  --"Has traido al Doctor?"

  --"Si, si!" answered Sparicio... "Y el viejo?"

  --"Aye! pobre!" responded Feliu,--"hace tres dias que esta muerto."

  Henry Edwards was dead!

  He had died very suddenly, without a cry or a word, while resting inhis rocking-chair,--the very day after Sparicio had sailed. They hadmade him a grave in the marsh,--among the high weeds, not far from theruined tomb of the Spanish fisherman. But Sparicio had fairly earnedhis hundred dollars.

  V.

  So there was nothing to do at Viosca's Point except to rest. Feliu andall his men were going to Barataria in the morning on business;--theDoctor could accompany them there, and take the Grand Island steamerMonday for New Orleans. With this intention Julien retired,--not sorryfor being able to stretch himself at full length on the good bedprepared for him, in one of the unoccupied cabins. But he woke beforeday with a feeling of intense prostration, a violent headache, and suchan aversion for the mere idea of food that Feliu's invitation tobreakfast at five o'clock gave him an internal qualm. Perhaps a touchof malaria. In any case he felt it would be both dangerous and uselessto return to town unwell; and Feliu, observing his condition, himselfadvised against the journey. Wednesday he would have anotheropportunity to leave; and in the meanwhile Carmen would take good careof him ... The boats departed, and Julien slept again.

  The sun was high when he rose up and dressed himself, feeling nobetter. He would have liked to walk about the place, but feltnervously afraid of the sun. He did not remember having ever felt sobroken down before. He pulled a rocking-chair to the window, tried tosmoke a cigar. It commenced to make him feel still sicker, and heflung it away. It seemed to him the cabin was swaying, as the SanMarco swayed when she first reached the deep water.

  A light rustling sound approached,--a sound of quick feet treading thegrass: then a shadow slanted over the threshold. In the glow of theopen doorway stood a young girl,--gracile, tall,--with singularlysplendid eyes,--brown eyes peeping at him from beneath a golden riot ofloose hair.

  --"M'sieu-le-Docteur, maman d'mande si vous n'avez besoin d'que'quechose?" ... She spoke the rude French of the fishing villages, wherethe language lives chiefly as a baragouin, mingled often with words andforms belonging to many other tongues. She wore a loose-falling dressof some light stuff, steel-gray in color;--boys' shoes were on her feet.

  He did not reply;--and her large eyes grew larger for wonder at thestrange fixed gaze of the physician, whose face had visiblybleached,--blanched to corpse-pallor. Silent seconds passed; and stillthe eyes stared--flamed as if the life of the man had centralized andfocussed within them.

  His voice had risen to a cry in his throat, quivered and swelled onepassionate instant, and failed--as in a dream when one strives to call,and yet can only moan ... She! Her unforgotten eyes, her brows, herlips!--the oval of her face!--the dawn-light of her hair! ... Adele'sown poise,--her own grace!--even the very turn of her neck, even thebird-tone of her speech! ... Had the grave sent forth a Shadow to haunthim?--could the perfidious Sea have yielded up its dead? For oneterrible fraction of a minute, memories, doubts, fears, mad fancies,went pulsing through his brain with a rush like the rhythmic throbbingof an electric stream;--then the shock passed, the Reasonspoke:--"Fool!--count the long years since you first saw herthus!--count the years that have gone since you looked upon her last!And Time has never halted, silly heart!--neither has Death stood still!"

  ... "Plait-il?"--the clear voice of the young girl asked. She thoughthe had made some response she could not distinctly hear.

  Mastering himself an instant, as the heart faltered back to its duty,and the color remounted to his lips, he answered her in French:--

  "Pardon me!--I did not hear ... you gave me such a start!" ... But eventhen another extraordinary fancy flashed through his thought;--and withthe tutoiement of a parent to a child, with an irresistible outburst ofsuch tenderness as almost frightened her, he cried: "Oh! mercifulGod!--how like her! ... Tell me, darling, your name; ... tell me whoyou are?" (Dis-moi qui tu es, mignonne;--dis-moi ton nom.)

  ... Who was it had asked her the same question, in another idiom everso long ago? The man with the black eyes and nose like an eagle'sbeak,--the one who gave her the compass. Not this man--no!

  She answered, with the timid gravity of surprise:--

  --"Chita Viosca"

  He still watched her face, and repeated the name slowly,--reiterated itin a tone of wonderment:--"Chita Viosca?--Chita Viosca!"

  --"C'est a dire ..." she said, looking down at herfeet,--"Concha--Conchita." His strange solemnity made her smile,--thesmile of shyness that knows not what else to do. But it was the smileof dead Adele.

  --"Thanks, my child," he exclaimed of a sudden,--in a quick, hoarse,changed tone. (He felt that his emotion would break loose in some wildway, if
he looked upon her longer.) "I would like to see your motherthis evening; but I now feel too ill to go out. I am going to try torest a little."

  --"Nothing I can bring you?" she asked,--"some fresh milk?"

  --"Nothing now, dear: if I need anything later, I will tell yourmother when she comes."

  --"Mamma does not understand French very well."

  --"No importa, Conchita;--le hablare en Espanol."

  --"Bien, entonces!" she responded, with the same exquisite smile."Adios, senor!" ...

  But as she turned in going, his piercing eye discerned a little brownspeck below the pretty lobe of her right ear,--just in the peachy curvebetween neck and cheek.... His own little Zouzoune had a birthmark likethat!--he remembered the faint pink