Part 21 (2/2)
”A permit! A permit to go to town, and to visit a woman ill with the very pestilence we are all doing our best to guard against? A permit to go there, and take the fever just as sure as you go, and bring back and spread the contagion among hundreds, whom we are all doing our best to guard from the pestilence! Impossible, Valentine! I wonder you could be so unreasonable as to ask it!”
”Unreasonable that I should want to go and see my suffering wife?”
”Yes--under the circ.u.mstances. Yes, I am sorry for her, Valentine, and sorry for you, though I cannot say that your manner is very respectful.
Still, I am very sorry for you; and if it were possible for me to do anything for your relief, I would do it--as it is, I regret that I can do nothing.”
”Oh, sir! Master Oswald, you could let me go to town,” pleaded Valentine.
”At the imminent hazard of your own life, and the all but certainty of bringing the pestilence upon this plantation.”
”All do not get the fever who are exposed to its influence; neither do they always spread contagion into the healthy places they chance to visit,” reasoned the young man.
”The risk is too great,” replied the master, curtly.
”Would you think it too great if your own wife were the one concerned, sir?” argued Valentine.
”Be more respectful, sirrah! There is some difference, I should say!”
retorted the master, angrily.
”Yes, there is a difference!” cried Valentine; ”and when I see anything to respect----” Suddenly he stopped. Swift as lightning came the thought that if he refrained from provoking his master now and came to him an hour hence, when he should be in a better humor, the prayer that he now denied he might then grant. Controlling his rising indignation, he bowed, turned abruptly, and went off.
”Impudent rascal! he was just about to say something that I should have had to knock him down for; and then he thought better of it, and stopped--it's well he did! Poor fellow, I am sorry for him, too; but it is all his own fault! If he were not so presumptuous, he would not feel so badly. That is the very deuce of it; for that prevents him from seeing that there is a difference.” Such were the reflections of Mr.
Waring as he continued to pace up and down the front piazza.
Valentine has mastered his anger, but he could not control the terrible anxiety that preyed upon his heart; Fannie suffering, Fannie dying, deserted, alone; little Coralie peris.h.i.+ng from neglect--these were the torturing visions that maddened his brain.
He went and told Phaedra, who wept bitterly at the sad story; but yet sought to comfort her son, and inspire hope, by promising to go herself and tell Mrs. Waring, and get her to intercede with her husband for Valentine.
This was done, but with little success; for, though Mrs. Waring was moved to compa.s.sion, and went to her husband and besought him to take compa.s.sion upon Valentine and send him to seek his sick wife and trust in Providence to avert all evil consequences, Mr. Waring was not only firm in his refusal, but also exhibited no small degree of impatience at her interference. Unwilling to inflict a hopeless disappointment upon the poor fellow, Mrs. Waring tempered the report of her ill-success by saying that, though Mr. Waring had now refused her pet.i.tion, she still hoped that he would think better of it and grant the permit.
Yet all this time Fannie might be dying, and her child peris.h.i.+ng for want--every moment was precious beyond price!
Phaedra sought her master's presence, and pleaded with him--pleaded by her long years of faithful service; by her devoted care of him in his feeble infancy; by the days of his childhood, when he and Valentine were playmates; by all the long years, as boys and as men, those two had pa.s.sed together, inseparable companions, until the marriage of each; by her own devoted attachment to them; by his love for his own wife; by every sweet affection and holy thought, to have compa.s.sion on her son, his own foster-brother, and let him go and minister to his sick--probably his dying wife. Phaedra pleaded with more eloquence, but with not more success, than the others.
Some substances melt under the action of water--others, in the same element, turn to stone. Instead of melting Mr. Waring's obduracy seemed to ossify under the effects of tears and entreaties. He told Phaedra, firmly, that he did not mean to gratify one man at the hazard of exposing many to contagion. And at the dinner-table, speaking partly in justification of his own line of conduct, and partly in apology for the manner in which he had met Mrs. Waring's intercession of the morning, he said:
”You emphasize this matter too much, madam; this Fannie is, after all, but one sufferer among thousands; you also mistake in endowing these creatures with the same acuteness of feelings that we possess; there is a difference, madam! there is a difference! I wish I could make people understand that there is a difference; neither Valentine nor Phaedra seem to have the slightest conception of this difference.”
”I must confess that in that respect I share their obtusity,” remarked madam, while Mr. Waring, in apparent self-satisfaction, went on with his dinner.
But was he really satisfied with himself? Who shall answer?
Meantime, Valentine wandered about, consumed with sorrow and anxiety.
Doubtless, he would have run away and endeavored to reach the town, but he knew how carefully the avenues thither were guarded, and how desperate was the attempt that he had already thrice before made to elude the police. It would involve a loss of several hours to make the attempt, which, if it should fail, as it was altogether likely to do, would entirely preclude him from all possible chance of seeing Fannie; therefore he thought best to make another appeal to his master before taking the last desperate step. He knew by experience that the hour after dinner always found Oswald Waring in his best humor.
It was then that he sought him.
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