Roxy

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54. The Clouds Return After The Rain



Just at this moment Bob, who was eager to do all in hie power to facilitate a reconciliation, came and stood in the door.

" I 'spects likely you haint had no dinnah today, Miss Roxy. 'Pears like 's if you'd had a mighty pow'ful long ride. I's jist got some suppah on de table, ma'am, ef you'll come and git some."

Mark started up at these words of Bob and said :

"Come, Roxy, you are faint. How pale you are !" at the same time leading her, as he held yet the tips of her fingers, toward the supper-table which sat invitingly on the back porch. But his thonghtfulness and Bob's ministration had come late. The fatigue of the day, added to Roxy's exhaustion from the days and nights of trouble that had preceded, were too much for her strength. Now that her hard ride was over and her last terrible task of reconciliation accomplished, the stimulus that upheld her was removed ; her head swam, she grew faint and Mark caught her insensible in his arms. For one minute he stood stunned with grief and surprise, a statue of despair, holding what seemed to him the lifeless form of the wife he had slain.

" On de bed, Mass' Mark, on de bed, sah. She on'j fainted, sah."

Recovering himself a little, Bonamy laid her upon the bed and 6et to work jesperately to restore her. As soon as Roxy returned to consciousness she showed signs of fever and delirium. Mark sent the negro for the doctor, while he stood watching alone with his wife.

The doctor came and, soon after, Twonnet and Jemima, But Bonamy would allow none of them to minister to Roxy During the week that followed, he stood over and about her bed, filled with a remorse that nothing he could do served to ameliorate. lie gave Roxy with his own hands her food and medicine ; no other was allowed to hand her so much as a spoonful of water. He rejected offers of relief with so much fierceness that after a while all thought of any one taking his place was given up. Twonnet and Jemima and Rachel Adams and Amanda Barlow would sometimes stand in a row, helpless spectators, at the foot of the bed, with the glowering Adams in the background, while Mark alone administered to Roxy'a wants. Even when the hands of two were necessary he accepted help with reluctance.

As for sleep, he scarcely had any in seven days and nights. Yielding to entreaties, he threw himself two or three times on the hard seat of a settee in tie room and slumbered, awaking, however, at the slightest sound that Roxy made. He scarcely ate at all. He was a strange sight, standing there with wan visage, sunken eyes and unkempt hair, turning fiercely upon every one who proposed that he should rest, utterly unwearying in his care of Roxy. No mother could have been more tender, no devotee more worshipful than he was in his treatment of the sufferer. The physical penance of his awful days and nights of watching relieved the torture of his mind and was the only thing that could have kept him alive and Bane -if indeed he were sane! Twonnet watched him sometimes in his wild devotion and wondered whether he were quite himself or net. lie had neither eyes nor ears for anybody else than Roxy. All the force of his intense and impulsive nature drove him madly to his pathetic task.

Worst of all, Roxy talked a great deal in her delirium, She went over and over every stage of the great trouble. Now she was defiantly angry at Nancy Kirtley, now she was refusing to wear this or that article of apparel.

" I will not wear anything that was bought with his money," she would cry, and then Mark, standing in a state of fascination like a man listening to his own doom, would shake and shudder in a kind of horror.

"Yes, I will kiss you, poor girl," Roxy would said. " You tried to kill me. You stabbed me in my heart. But there's Jesus Christ standing there by you. Poor wicked Nancy ! Come, I'll forgive you. I'll kiss you. I must. But oh what a a sinner you are ! It's hard, so hard."

Then she would slumber awhile and break out with :

" Oh, that's Mark ! He's looking in the window. Great black lines under his eyes! Oh, what a face! Go 'way, I can't stand it ! Poor fellow ! Poor fellow ! I'm so sorry for him ! Get out of my way ! Let go of me ! I'm going back to Mark ! I'm going to Mark ! Here I am, I've come back, Mark ! Here I am ! Here I am ! I'm going to stay to stay to stay till I die ! Why don't you kiss me, Mark, and say you're glad ? Oh, dear, I feel so tired."

When Roxy talked in this way, Mark would get down on his knees and bury his face in the bedclothes. But while all the rest wept he did not shed a tear.

From two people he would take a little secondary. help sometimes. Bobo stood by him a great deal of the time. To make B}bo his companion seemed in some way a sort of propitiation. lie had always felt a dislike to the lad, and now Bobo should help him. It would please Roxy. Bobo would bring him the water or the medicine. And whe his sister Janet, hearing of R )xy's sickness, came back he permitted her to assist him a little.

If anybody hinted a fatal result of the sickness Mark turned on them with the glare of a savage. Even from the doctor he would not hear any unfavorable prognosis. He was resolved that she should get well. He was resolved that the symptoms were ever those of improvement. And all that looked on agreed that if Roxy died Mark might die also.

At last the fever burnt itself out. The eyes, so full of an unwholesome brightness, lost their luster and were dull. The end seemed not far off. The doctor said that the strength of the patient was too far gone for her to recover. It fell to Whittaker to tell her that she had not long to live.

"Mark," she said, in a voice so faint that it was hardly audible.

Mark heard her where he knelt by the bed-foot, and came round by her, wan, wild, and desperate.

" Good-bye ! " and Roxy smiled faintly. " Good-bye ! poor Mark, good-bye ! "

But Mark said nothing. He stood transfixed in a speechless and tearless despair.

Roxy essayed to say good-bye again, and sank into a swoon. Mark saw it and groaned.

" She has gone! " he cried, and turning round, he went slowly out of the room, to the porch. It was growing dark. He paused awhile, and then rushed from the house toward the river. He walked rapidly along the pebbly shore, Mile after mile he traveled in a blind desperation, saying to himself, " I ought to die for that ! I ought to die for that ! " But whenever the suicidal impulse seized him and he felt driven to rush into the water, he was restrained by Bome thought that Roxy, up there whither she had gone, would perhaps be rendered unhappy by such an act. Then he would say " I'd better serve out my time. I must serve out my time." Some thought that he was doomed to self-punishment had burnt itself into his half-crazed brain.

About nine or ten o'clock, he reached Craig's Landing. Here he sat down upon a log under the bank. The packet-boat, called " Lady Pike," was coining down the river. With a dazed sort of feeling, Mark sat there bare-headed, for he had brought no hat, and watched the steamer's approach. She came up to the landing, and the roustabouts, aided by much swearing from the mate, put ashore the little stock of goods purchased in Cincinnati by the " storekeeper " in the back settlement known as Brar town. When the last article of all, a keg of New Orleans molasses, had been landed, and the roustabouts were running back up the " walk-plank," Mark, obeying a sudden impulse, ran after them, saying to himself, " I'll serve out my time." The second clerk, seeing a bareheaded man coming aboard, demanded whether he had anything to pay his passage with or not. Bonamy took a half dollar from his pocket, and with it paid for a deck passage to Louisville.

When the boat was slowly pushing out from the shore, Mark ran forward, and, recognizing by the light of the boat's torch Bill McKay, the stalwart man who lived near the landing, called out, " Bill! when you go to town, tell my folks I'm coming back as soon as I've served out my time." But the light was not on Bonamy's face, and Bill could only see that it was a bareheaded and crazy-looking man who had called to him.

As the boat moved away, Mark went aft, and climbed up on a pile of sacks of shelled corn, and in the midst of the rude and regular clatter of the boat's engines and the hissing of the steam-pipes, he sank exhausted at last into a troubled slumber.